I was talking to someone last night about the blog I created and it wasn’t (insert a name here). Ahah! Anyway, I told him it was a real problem trying to write stories that didn’t offend, piss off, or otherwise breach the trust of some people. I told him I can sometimes change the names of those innocent (but mostly guilty) and there would be a chance someone could easily put the pieces together. And some would go nuts that I publicized that particular story.
What to do? I can’t write about the weather as that will bore some to tears.
So the answer I find is that I can make a damn fool of myself instead. I won’t sue myself, I won’t write angry letters to myself or knock on my door in a state of rage on telling about myself. I won’t hear, “Oh! How could you tell the entire WORLD about that!!!!”
So here’s as little piece of my past…
*****
For those who live in Pawtucket and just about anyone who knows teen partying behavior will get this. When I was 16, we could hang at certain houses as the parents were not freaked by that, but we couldn’t have cases of beer going down our throats either. We barely had our driver’s licenses and even less the needed money to buy a car and insurance. So where do teens go to have a little party? Especially in January?
In our section of the town we had “the back of Slater Park, ” as we called it. It was a forested area with a river and a large reservoir that was difficult for the cops to get their cruisers into. It was nice for the privacy to do our little thing.
We had our keg parties there. Even in January. We’d build a bonfire and drink cheap keg beer out of those red plastic cups. If you were close enough to the bonfire, you were warm enough even though it was a cold winter night.
One of those who attended those keg parties was Ann M. (not her real name).
I’m not sure women can get this but men will. There are rare times when you meet a girl and you think to yourself, “Oh Wow, Look at her!!!“ The Italians call it being hit by a thunderbolt. You cannot get her out of your mind.
My reaction to Ann M. was that. I was thrown by it. I thought about her constantly and if I saw her or talked to her, my happiness index shot up by 1,000 points. I have to say it again, it’s RARE that any of us men get hit like this.
So, one night at “the back of Slater Park” we had left the bonfire behind the trestle and hung out underneath some high tension lines rated above, I bet, 350,000 volts. There are a few towers there that carry the lines over the Ten Mile River and that’s where were I and Ann M and about 10 others were at.
I had got it into my head that if I could just get Ann’s attention, do some stupid but glorious thing I’d really get her to notice me. That’s when, in a keg beer haze, I started climbing up the lattice work of the tower above them. I had gone just about 10 feet up when those below me started cheering my idiocy.
“Jump! Jump! Jump Ron! Be a Hero!” they chanted.
I figured, hey, I can jump down and land right next to Ann like Superman landing right next to Lois Lane. The problem was that the woods aren’t lighted like a mall parking lot. It’s quite dark and my judgment as to where to land was hampered by that cheap Budweiser.
But hey, all for love, right?
I leap and the next thing I know is that my accuracy was off by about 3-4 inches. I landed full force, brushing rather stiffly, Ann M. We both tumbled to the sand and rolled a bit. When I got up I started apologizing profusely to the girl of my dreams who I knocked to the ground.
“YOU STUPID MORON!! YOU SILLY SON OF A BITCH!!” she yelled at me. “Silly son of a bitch….” that I remember to this day!
“But, but….but…” was all I could muster.
She moved off with the other girls to rant and rave about my shoving her nearly face first into the sand and complaining what an idiot I was. I just stood there, with Dan and Mark who were laughing their ass off at me.
No. I never got to date her.
Ah well…live and learn.
Now when I think about that night, it was hilarious. I suppose by now Ann M. has forgiven me.
In my next installment, I might tell of the nice grass fire I accidently set with fireworks in Slater Park ala 1976. Hey, I was just 11. Ok Chief Thurber... now you know who did it!
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