The real reason I bring this up, however, is because of an interesting question posed by my American Sign Language professor this morning in class. We were reviewing past material to make sure we were prepared for the exam next week, and I'm still not quite sure how we progressed from signing numbers over one thousand to criminal history, but we were asked if we'd ever been in trouble with the cops. The question was a joke, but it still reminded me of a particular instance that I knew immediately was destined to be recounted here as another embarrassing tale from my youth. However, unlike my usual "Episode From My Childhood" posts, this one doesn't take place in elementary school.
I have had a lot of very strange friends over the years, being a rather strange person myself, but arguably none of them were stranger than one particular friend I made in intermediate school. I've gotten into some trouble in the past for mentioning names in these things, so instead of calling him by his actual name I'll just refer to him as "Nugget." Nugget was his nickname, given to him by me. He actually earned the nickname on a river trip, and the nugget part was originally preceded by another word, but because certain members of my family read this blog and gripe at me when I curse in my updates, we'll just leave it at Nugget. It's fitting enough on its own, though. The dictionary definition for the word nugget is "A lump of something," and Nugget was definitely a lump of something.
Nugget and I originally met in the seventh grade, and we only had one class together: Home Economics. Yep. I took Home Ec. I'm sure it's the same with most intermediate schools, but we had the option of taking Shop or Home Ec as one of our electives. Typically, all the boys took Shop, and all the girls took Home Ec. However, that semester was my first semester of public school since my sheltered elementary school days as I had been homeschooled for all of fifth and sixth grade, so I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Furthermore, when faced with the choice of spending an entire period every day surrounded by attractive girls and eating glorified EasyBake Oven cakes, or spending that time surrounded by sharp things, idiots with access to bandsaws and wood lathes, and guys who hated me, I'd say that in retrospect the decision made sense. The one fatal flaw in that logic, however, was that the girls I was surrounded by were, for the most part, the most unfortunately unattractive girls I'd ever met. Furthermore, the only one who ever spoke to me had an underbite, dull, wide eyes and a muddy, sunburned complexion that literally made her look like a sock-eye salmon. There were times I wondered if she'd actually registered for the class, or just gotten lost on her way up-river to spawn.
Now in the beginning, Nugget and I were not exactly what you'd call "friends." We spent literally every day in that class period ridiculing each other in a battle of wits to see whose venomous insults could wound the other the deepest. It remained a strange kind of cruel game until one particular afternoon as we worked on our cross-stitch projects (which absolutely pains me to say and would shame the fathers of most guys I know), I won. I took a particularly scathing jab at his mother, and I won. My prize was getting the top end of my pinky (from the base of the nail up) nearly cut completely off. Now, to be fair, he didn't attack me directly with the scissors, he was attempting to cut up the pile of thread I was using to work on my project and I was trying to save it. My finger was just an unfortunate casualty. It was, however, an unfortunate casualty that bled profusely, and unsurprisingly I didn't exactly react well to my newfound ability to rotate the top half of my finger enough that it faced the wrong way. In the chaos that ensued, I called him a few things loudly enough that I'm fairly sure it disturbed the classes three rooms over, and then I was sent to the nurse's office. The following day, we were both sent to the principal's office and threatened with a paddle unless we were willing to act like friends.
And for many years after that, we were. That's how the strangest friendship of my life began.
But that little anecdote isn't the story this blog post is about. The real story begins a few years after that, during a gaming session with Nugget and another friend. Again, with the names, so I'll call that other friend "Billy." Now, Billy and Nugget and I had all gathered over at Billy's house for a long night of Dungeons and Dragons, Halo 2 and GunBound. It was about two o'clock in the morning, and we'd played the hell out of everything we had, and we were bored. So we did what any average teenage nerd boys would do in that given situation. We went out into the back yard, armed ourselves with various wooden and bamboo weaponry, and beat the ever-living piss out of each other.
It was a game we called "Dueling," and it was essentially as close to sword-fighting as we could get. Actually, on several occasions we actually did duel with live weapons, and in one particularly impulsive instance we coated those live weapons in homemade napalm and fought with flaming weapons. That evening, however, it was just our standard arsenal of sticks, bamboo rods, a bull whip from a carnival game, and a monkey's fist. After about the third round of this, we decided that Billy's back yard was a bit too small for our game and we started to look for a better place to play. That's when we realized that Billy's house was a matter of blocks away from the city's baseball fields. And a plan was hatched. We gathered up every single stick, bokken, plank and staff in the back yard, along with a wooden dagger, the monkey's fist and bull whip, and a handful of javelin-shaped iron curtain rods. Nugget, for whatever reason, had recently bought a used diving wetsuit, which he was now wearing, and Billy had donned his black shade cloak from his Renaissance Festival costume. I had found myself a trench coat, and I still have no idea where it came from. And just like that, we descended on the baseball fields. And we commenced battle.
It was awesome, and we were enjoying ourselves thoroughly until I happened to notice a peculiar white vehicle pulling into the parking lot. I immediately recognized it as a Lake Jackson patrol car and notified the other two, and we did what any sensible person would do in that situation: we jumped a fence and hid behind the wall of the concession stand. Fortunately, I came to my senses before the officer arrived and realized that the only thing worse than being caught trespassing is being caught trespassing and actively attempting to hide from the police.
Now, I can only imagine what kinds of strange things you see and encounter as a police officer. But I can only imagine what must have been going through that officer's head when he arrived at the baseball fields in the dead of night to find three teenage idiots wearing a wetsuit, a black cloak and a trench coat, armed with a bullwhips and curtain rods.
There was a long moment of silence.
And then needless to say, we were asked to leave because we were disturbing the peace.
And that is the only encounter I have ever had with the police. Those were strange times.
-The Sarcastic Soul-
((Just as a side-note, I'll probably be revising or just removing this entry at a later date because quite frankly, it sucks. My writing here is just absolutely dry and not funny at all, and I was struggling to get it written, so I apologize. It happens.))
