Childhood+Experience

There have been a lot of experiences that have influenced me to change some stupid things I have been doing with other kids or to just change myself all together. I think the one event that has impacted me the most on who I am today is getting the cops called on me. It was a bright warm summer day. My friends and I are always looking for something to do. We were always riding our bikes around the area of Oak View and Ojai. The best part of biking is whenever a cool breeze sets in the breeze would instantly cool you down. We always cherished these moments because these breezes would rarely happen, especially if it’s on a hot day. The bike trail was our hotspot for biking because it leads us straight to Taco Bell. Taco Bell is where we pretty much go and eat every weekend. We also liked the bike trail because we liked to jump the jumps. There were some really fat jumps on the way and we just had to stop and at least jump a couple of them. Let me state that I was not a big fan of jumping. Since I did not like to jump like my friends do, what I would do is film them jumping. Than after I would record them they would take a look at the film and if they didn’t like it than we would try to record another film. Normally that’s what would happen. It gets really annoying really fast. They would be so particular on their jumping that we would normally stay there for a good ½ hour. Today was different though. We got it in probably 15 minutes and we were back on the bike trail. Taco Bell is about 1-2 miles from our houses so it normally took us about 20-30 minutes to get there. I was starving so I was happy when recording them jumping didn’t take that long. We were riding pretty fast down the hill. Regin and Noah must have been really hungry because they were going pretty fast down the hill but all of the sudden they came to a stop. They came to a stop because there was this one kid on the bike trail that Noah didn’t like. We all saw this same kid and we all knew that Noah didn’t like this kid. So after we all caught up to him we were all egging Noah on to go fight this kid. Noah drops his bike, and without saying a word walks over to him and starts pushing this kid around. This kid didn’t like it so he pushed Noah back. Than we all said “Eeeeeeeee.” Than Tyler says “Noah are going to take that s&#@.” This is what we would always do. We would always pour gas on the fire. Noah gets back up and cracks this kid right in the mouth. We all got our phones out and started recording it. “Beat his a$#,” we all yell. Noah was on top of the kid just giving him punch after punch right into the kids face. Than Tyler yells “Bone out!” We notice a couple of people behind us on their bikes. Noah gets off of the kid. The first thing I saw was the blood that covered his face. I didn’t really care because I didn’t really like this kid either, so we just got back on our bikes and we went straight to Taco Bell. We finally made it to Taco Bell, all of us complimenting Noah because he pretty much controlled the fight. All of us showed Noah the video and he started laughing because the kid was crying. We all order our meals and we sit down to eat. Than a cop comes through the Taco Bell door. We really didn’t care that much except for Noah. He was scared out of his mind. He kept on saying “What if the kid called the cops? What if the cop saw me fighting?” than Regin says “Than you’re screwed.” All of us started laughing except Noah. The cop orders his meal and sits down without saying a word to us. Noah ate his meal quickly and ran out the door. The rest of us ate our meals nonchalantly. When we were done Noah tells us to get out of there quickly so we did. We were back on the bike trail and all of us knew that we had dodged a bullet. We would have gotten in trouble for filming it so we were also in a little bit of trouble along with Noah. After we rode back home we spent about an hour down at Daniels house playing Rock Band. We had our own band and our name was something like 3 Windows Down. I know it was a stupid name but all of us thought it was funny. I was the lead singer, Daniel was the drummer, Noah was the lead guitarist, and Regin was the bass guitarist. Tyler didn’t like Rock band that much so he was normally off to the side playing on his iPhone. We were playing when all of the sudden Noah got a phone call from his mom telling him to get home. She was yelling so Noah put his phone on speaker and we all started laughing. Noah urged us to come with him so we all went to his house. By our surprise the kid that Noah beat the s@*$ out of was in his front yard talking to Noah’s mom. The kid’s mom was also there. All of us started laughing so hard because we knew Noah would get caught for this one. We let Noah go and talk to them inside of his house. We were outside trying to look into their house to see if there was any fighting but there wasn’t any. Than just as soon as Noah went into the house, he came back out of the house. You could see the anger in Noah’s eyes, whispering every cuss word in the book. Noah apologized to the kid in front of us and Noah was free to go. His parents were never tough on him, so whenever he did something bad all he would have to do is apologize and he could do anything he wanted. We went to Tyler’s house. No one was home, so as soon as Noah walked in he started yelling and cussing like crazy. Saying how he was going to do the same thing to that kid but even worse. Than Regin says he has an idea. His idea was to sneak out in the middle of the night and go egg the kid’s house. All of us said yes. That night all of us spent the night at Tyler’s house. We spent the night there because his parents were the only parents that would say yes to 4 other kids spending the night. We had Domino’s that night and we were talking about how we were going to do this little mission of ours. It was a quite simple task. We sneak out of Tyler’s house, we buy 2 cartons of eggs at the nearby store, we go to the kid’s house and we start chucking eggs at it, and then we sneak back into Tyler’s house. It was about 12:30 and we knew it was time to initiate our plan. We sneak out of Tyler’s house and we walk a good 15 minutes to the store. Then I realize that the store closes at 11:00. We were thinking about quitting and just going back to Tyler’s, but Noah says we have to do this. So we sneak back into Tyler’s and we grab about 2 cartons of eggs than we sneak back out again. This kid’s house was about a 10 minute walk from Tyler’s so we ran to make it 5 minutes. We didn’t want to stay out too late or we were bound to run into a cop sooner or later. We reached his house and we pull out the cartons of the eggs and we start hitting his house. All of us started laughing especially Noah. About halfway through the egging a car pulls up we start hiding. I hopped into a nearby bush and the rest of them hid somewhere else. The fear of being caught was quickly entering my head. The car slowly drives by. My heart almost stops when I realize it was a cop car. I really couldn’t believe it. It looks like the car is about past us when it stops. According to Tyler and Regin it was now or never. They dropped their eggs, jump out of the bush and starting running down the street like gazelles. The cop gets out of the car and starts running after them. Daniel, Noah, and I thought it was the perfect time to make our move so we start running the other way. We thought we were clear and all of the sudden we hear another cop telling us to stop. We wanted to split up but we couldn’t. We were too scared to split up. We thought we could out run him, but we couldn’t. Once he got near us we all decided to stop running and lie on the ground. The cop didn’t hand cuff us but he took us back to his car, which to my surprise was a different one. I had no idea that there were 2 cops after us. We quickly met up with Tyler and Regin. We didn’t say a word to each other because we were pretty scared on what our parents were going to say. We knew that we were busted. Both of the cops were asking us general questions. All of us answered them truthfully and they asked us what our parent’s phone numbers were and we all took a big gulp and we told them there numbers. They also asked us where we lived. We told them where we lived and right after that the cops divided us up. They decided that Daniel and Tyler would go with Officer Hernandez and that the rest of us would go with Officer Dike. Ya I also thought it was a funny name but I wasn’t laughing then because I was scared out of my mind. We were dead silent in the car. None of us was saying a word to each other on the car ride home. I was the first to be dropped off. I knew I was in big trouble. The cop tells me to get out of the vehicle. I get out and make my way over to my house. My heart began beating faster and faster as we walked closer and closer to the door. I felt like I was about to barf. The cop knocks on my front door. Each time he knocked I felt like my heart was about to pump right out of my chest. A few seconds later my dad answers the door and he automatically looks at the cop then gives me the “look”. The “look” is when my dad looks at me like he is going kill me. He has given me the “look” many times but this time it really looked like he meant it. The cop told me to go sit on the bench while he talked to my dad. My mom wasn’t home at the time for some reason. I was thinking about this just to try to get my mind off of what was actually happening to me. I started to think about the consequences on what was going to happen to me. I started to cry on the bench. I was so scared on what my parents were going to do to me. Finally after 15 excruciating minutes my dad and Officer Dike walk over to me. The officer has decided to give me and my idiot friends another chance unless the kid and the kids family decides to press charges for vandalism. They said that they will try to talk them out of pressing charges. Than he says “But! If I see you and your friends going out and causing trouble, the next time they won’t be that easy on us. I was very thankful but I didn’t say thank you because I was still too scared to even talk. Still wiping off the tears from my face I got the nerves to say “Thank you.” He looks back at me and says “No problem kid.” My dad and I go back into the house. Of course my dad starts yelling and chewing me out. I was expecting this, but what I wasn’t expecting is that he promised not to tell my mom. My mom would probably go gorilla status on me. My dad knew how my mom was and he wasn’t about to let me be killed by her. I thanked my dad and he warned me next time I do this, I won’t be as lucky. As for my friends well Tyler and Regin hardly got in any trouble but Noah and Daniel were the people that took the hard hits. It was Daniel taking the hardest one. He was grounded for what felt like an eternity. His parents didn’t want him hanging out with him because his parents thought that we were bad influences on. This really made me mad because if anything Daniel was the bad influence on us. We talked to his parents and apologized for getting Daniel in this whole mess. After that Daniel got to hang out with us instead of hanging out with his other nerd friends. Noah was also in huge trouble. This time he didn’t get off so easy with this one. He was grounded for a pretty long time and every Saturday he would have to help his mom with everyday chores for the whole day! As for the kid, we had to help clean up his house that we vandalized. Our parents forced us to help them with some chores around the house. I thought this was the right thing to do after we did that mean, nasty thing to his house. Even though we were helping them with chores, Noah still gave that same kid a dirty look. It was getting kind of annoying and I told Noah to stop trying to cause problems with this kid. I don’t know if he did or not because Noah and I go to different schools and this kid goes to the same school as Noah so I still don’t know if Noah and this kid still have problems at school. Whatever the case was, I was glad to be out of this whole mess. This predicament helped me realize that you could get in some serious trouble for doing some stupid things with your friends that you think is funny. I was very lucky not to be in big trouble because of what I did to that kid’s house. Just because a friend tells you to go egg a house doesn’t mean that you have to go with him. I should have simply just said “NO!” I think that is a key word if your friends try to peer pressure you into doing something you know will have consequences. That’s my story. Hopefully you have both enjoyed reading and learning from my mistakes. Just because your friends are doing stupid things doesn’t mean you have to go with them and do stupid things with them.(2,598 words)