I started writing a young adult book a few days ago that starts with the line:
"Looking back, of course Max could see that taking Miss Desmond’s silver Audi for a joyride instead of taking his fourth period history final was a bad idea."
Max isn't a bad kid, but he's a little impulsive, and he likes that thrill you get when doing something you really, really shouldn't be doing.
My friend Shana read the first two chapters and emailed me a hilarious story about sneaking out and stealing her parents' van that got me thinking on my own escapades as a teen, some of which my parents never knew about. Now, I just told my mom yesterday not to worry, go ahead and read my blog, don't be scared, so I probably won't be sharing any of the juicy ones here. (Don't worry, Mom. I always joked with my friends that you were such a light sleeper that if I put one toe on the floor in the middle of the night, you would instantly say, "What's the matter, Liss?" We never even thought about sneaking out of your house!)
Still, I have lots of memories of stupid things I have done, things that afterward seemed like a reeeaallly bad idea. Even when I didn't get caught, which was truly most of the time, I sometimes looked back on the situation and thought, "God, what if..."
OK, I'll tell one example. (Mom, you might want to stop reading and come back for one of the cute posts with pics of the grandkids...I swear it's normally quite safe!)
So my friend and I took a dance class every Monday night. Ballet was the first hour, then we had a break, and then jazz and tap classes for the second hour. Not everyone took the classes in the second hour, or sometimes people only stayed for ballet or whatever. So L and I thought it would be a great idea to skip the second hour one evening and go see what kind of trouble we could get into waltzing around downtown in our spandex clothes. Let's just say it was plenty. We ended up at this apartment where the only thing I clearly remember was there was a little girl running around in her pajamas yelling "Frick my Bic" while she flicked a Bic lighter and this guy (who was about five years older than us) playing tug-o-war with a pit bull while offering us shots of whiskey.
As a parent, I would FREAK. THE. HELL. OUT. if I caught my kids in such a place at age fourteen or whatever, with their black eyeliner and their fishnets and their high-top shoes. (That attire on my sons could possibly make me freak out anyway, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it!) My point is, there are a lot of baaaaad things that can happen to kids, and it's so freaking amazing, given the stuff I know you all did growing up, that the bad stuff doesn't happen more often.
So...got any good stories about the crazy things your parents never knew you were up to? The confessional is in the comments!
notes from a knew-it-all-- the blog of YA author ELISSA JANINE HOOLE
12 comments:
Do I have to post one since you already confessed one for me? :-P
I have 'lots of stories, 99% of which my parents know nothing about. Let's see. Well, when I was 17 I was dated a guy who was 22. (Yes, my parents knew that I was dating him.....my dad even bought him a drink at a bar one night.) One night my friend Angela and I had a few drinks at the "apartment" that she shared with her then fiance, which was just a room above her fiance's parent's garage. We ended up getting this hair brained idea to toilet paper my boyfriend's house. He lived on the res with his roommate in free public housing and his neighborhood wasn't really the safest place on earth. (Yeah, my boyfriend was a real winner!)
Angela had this huge box filled with condom's from her fiance's bachelor party, and we went to the Little Store and bought a bunch of toilet paper. As we drove out to my boyfriend's house we stopped multiple times and stole plastic yard ornaments and plastic flowers our of people's yards. All in all I think we ended up with 10 or so yard ornaments, including some pink flamingos, and multiple bunches of plastic flowers.
We arrived at my boyfriend's house at about 3 AM, and set about "decorating" his yard. We had toilet paper, condoms, and of course the lawn ornaments that we had acquired everywhere. It was quite the sight, I must say!
After it was all decorated I dropped off Angela and headed home so that I could get a couple of hours of sleep before I had my senior portraits at 9 AM in the morning. On the way home I was still quite buzzed and I had to drive through Cloquet. I stopped at an intersection and as I was waiting for the light to change a police cruiser pulled up in the turn lane across the intersection from me. Oooh, boy, I was sure that I was going to get pulled over and get busted for drunk driving. Once the light turned green I don't think I've ever concentrated on driving so carefully in my life. Thankfully I got out of there without getting pulled over and I made it home safe and sound.
The next morning after I had my senior portraits session I talked to my boyfriend and he told me all about this awesome decorating job that someone had done in his yard the night before. I confessed that I had done it, and he was truly thrilled that I had done something so "cool". LOL
BTW, that night was the last night that I ever drove drunk. I came so close to getting caught and I vowed to never put myself into that situation again.
Yay, my first confessor! Great story, Shana! I can honestly say I've never T.P.'d anyone's home. I think it's funny that he was actually happy about it!
My sister and I used to have parties twice a year; my parents went away the weekend before Memorial Day and the weekend after Labor Day, and for 3 years, we had parties, including kegs in the bathtub. We wondered if my mother ever found out about it later, and then about five or so years ago, she was telling us about a friend whose teenage grandson had been caught having a party in his parents' house; she thought that they treated him too leniently, and then she said, "you guys are lucky you never did that...because I'd have found out, and you'd have had hell to pay".
Mwah! Mwah ha ha!
My boyfriend and I were in the basement and Mom was upstairs. I was giving him a perm and Mom set the timer while his hair was in those creepy little curlers. He was so cute we got a little frisky.
Later, the timer upstairs went off, just when we were rearranging our clothing. My mom shouted down the stairs, "You're done!"
BTW, our 24th Anniversary is next month.
Yay! Some more confessors have bared their souls! And nobody's even chickened out and gone the Anonymous route.
cdp, did you tell her, or is it still your little secret? You must have been good (but not too good)on the clean-up detail!
chumplet, that story is hysterical. Although how anyone could feel frisky with home perm fumes in the mix is beyond me. I love the "You're done!" Ha, ha, ha!!!
Hhhmmmmm, this does give me reason to reminisce...but I must admit by the end of the story Elissa, you SO could pick me for doing this.
Well, in Sept. of my senior year of high school, a lovely Navy boy was home on leave for 9 days. He was 2 years older than I, graduated from the same high school. A friend of a friend set us up at a party and long story, short, I ended up in Spain 9 months later (because it was summer time, not because I had been promiscuous). The interesting twist to the story is how I actually got to Spain.
I had befriended a Swedish foreign exchange student my senior year. Although we didn't attend the same high school, we became quite close. After I had my grad party, earned enough money from relatives to do something grand, I flew to Sweden with my parents blessings to stay the summer with him and his family. They were such gracious hosts. Neither of these wonderful people nor my family back home knew I had also plotted to somehow get myself to Spain from Sweden (yeah, to all that grad party money). Once in Sweden, I took the family car (with permission, of course) and set off for a travel agent in Stockholm. My foreign friend couldn't drive as he wasn't old enough by Swedish standards, I also became his summer freedom). I did manage to get a reasonable ticket to Spain, landing in a city about 5 hrs drive from where my "friend" was living at the time. He had no phone and could only be reached at unusual times in the middle of the night when he was at work. Me being the planner that I am, thought a Swedish phone card my also come in handy. Picked one of them up too. I managed to connect with him via telephone one time while in Sweden. I gave him the flight number, date and the name of the airport. I didn't even need to cross my fingers, I knew he would be there to pick me up. And he was. I spent 5 fun weeks along the southern coast of Spain with an older man who was entirely dreamy. When it was time to leave, he brought me back to the same airport and we said our good byes. I arrived safe and sound back in Sweden. My host parents were at the airport to pick me up with disappointed faces. I forgot to mention to them I would not have normal telephone access and was enjoying life so much, I didn't bother to call. oops... I gave my apologies, and stayed a few more days with them before heading back to the Mpls airport. It wasn't until I pulled some Spanish mud dolls from my carry-on to give to my sisters that I told my family 'oh, by the way, I went to Spain.' I remember my mom pulling my hair, as if I were a small child. That's not right, because I have a small child and I've never pulled her hair out of anger. So, I explained the lack of phone, yes I paid for it with my own money, no he's just a friend (secretly, I was going to marry him, of course), the Swedish people brought me to the airport, how do you think I got there? Duh!
Aside from pulled hair, I also remember a quiet 3 hour car ride back home. After traveling Europe for a whole summer, fresh from high school, my two sisters in the back seat, and not much was dared to be said. Oh, the power of parents. And even greater, the power of a girl with a plan.
*pulls ellieiscool's hair*
How could you do that to your mother?!?
*pouts*
My mom made me use my grad money for college. :(
A story from Lisa Harold:
This is a story that happened in the 1980's, and is a type of "folklore" in my family and extended family. When my uncles tell the story, they tend to embelish. I will tell the true version...
My younger brother and three of his friends had made a "dummy" out of old clothes and stuffed with newspapers. One evening, they decided it would be fun to hang it over a street light on a busy street a few blocks from our home. They swung the dummy over the light. My sister and I stood and watched. More neighborhood kids joined in, and a plan was hatched to try to drop this dummy on cars. They had the system worked out well. One person held the rope attached to the dummy, the others watched and would yell "drop" when the car was almost directly under the dummy. (the rope holders were out of sight in the bushes)
Many cars came by with the word "drop" being yelled, but the dummy kept dropping right behind the cars, no luck! This went on for about 15 minutes, until.... the yellers began screaming "drop" even more louder than before, and this time it worked!! The dummy landed beautifully right on top of a .... COP car!! (found out later that the yellers were saying "cop", not "drop"... but who knew!!)The cop car screached to a stop, and kids went running everywhere. I had been standing with my bike and I high tailed it out of there home. Ran in the house and told my parents that my brother and my sister might have been arrested!
Later when the whole group gathered again, I got to hear what happend after I high tailed it out of there. The cop got out of his car, and shone his flashlight in the bushes, but he didn't find anyone. He then took the dummy off the top of his car and threw it in the back, and left. That was the last we saw of my brothers dummy.
Lisa, oh my god, if someone dropped a dummy like that onto my car I'd probably have a heart attack. Plus I'd probably crash the car. But ah, what a story wouldn't exist if it weren't for the simple fact that cop rhymes with drop! :)
Thanks for the story!
Wow, Lisa and Ellie, I hardly knew you. I am amazed!
From Lisa H
Ellie, I really loved your story! How romantic...
now that I am an adult driver, I don't know what I would do if a dummy dropped on my car! But as kids, we thought it would be great fun.. I am sure glad that we did not cause any accidents..
One item that I forgot to mention when I posted the story, my brother is now a police officer!!
Lisa H.
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