Someone recently said to me, “Okay, you are officially the most interesting person I’ve ever met.” This was after I told them I did a stint at Seaworld in San Diego as a mime some years ago.
I don’t know about that “interesting” part. I don’t think of myself like that, it’s just that I’ve had a lot of various gigs because my left and right brain are always battling each-other and I’ve spent a lifetime trying to decide what I want to do when I grow-up.
So far I’ve been a dishwasher, sailor, clerk, security-guard, actor, radio announcer-producer, mime, taxi-driver, film and TV extra, Starbucks barista and a handful of other things. My résumé takes up half a tree.
I think what this person meant was that I have a lot of crazy stories, which is true for the most part, because if you’re around long enough and do enough things then crazy stuff is bound to happen to you.
So I think I’ll dedicate the next few posts on this blog to some of those titillating tales. The criteria I’m setting for myself is that they all have to be non-fiction from my past. Nothing is made-up, nothing is embellished. These things really happened. But take note that the title of this post includes the word “terror” only for the purpose of alliteration. These tales are only terrifying to certain people who need to get out more.
I’ll start by digging deep and going way back to my high-school years with a short little diddy because I’ve already taken enough of your time in setting this whole thing up. So here we go..
PONDEROSA HIGH SCHOOL – 1975
(excerpted from this post and edited)
The boy was still a boy as he stepped off the yellow bus with the rest of his peers. But several years had trundled by, leaving him taller, lankier and a bit of a smart-ass. He and his buddy ditched the group that was headed into the museum at Golden Gate park during their field trip to San Francisco.
The two opted instead to take an unofficial tour of the park and purchase an unofficial joint from a much older and scruffier black man who approached them. The high-schooler was smart, really! He just didn’t know it yet.
They found some bushes to hide in for the purpose of toking up. Then they spent the next two hours wandering the park in a daze, watching it ebb and flow. People flung grins at them as they passed by, while the world spun with the two clinging madly to it. They laughed as trees danced and birds sang songs with actual words in them for a change. They spun and spat on the ground more in those two hours than they’d ever done in either of their 16 years.
The problem was that they’d gotten used to the passive (by comparison) dime-bags circulating around the school, wherein one had to take heavy draws on the substance to instigate any kind of the slightest buzz. This stuff in the park was out of their league, but they didn’t know it, so they employed the same enthusiasm while inhaling as they’d done with the cheap shit and it kicked their collective asses.
After reconnecting with the group later on they wondered between them what in the hell WAS IN THAT STUFF? The teacher balled them out but he so resembled a yapping little dog wearing a suit jacket and jeans that the two couldn’t help snickering, which caused the nappy little dog to yap more, which caused their snickers to explode into guffaws. It was all quite the psychedelic cycle of craziness, that culminated with a visit to the principal’s office the next day.
They were dumb, but smart enough to not ‘fess-up to the principal despite his repeated questioning, so in this day long before drug testing was standard they managed to get off with a stern verbal warning and a shaking finger.
But a lesson was learned that day, and caution was born in the writer of this tale. As for the other, we don’t know – his prison stint in the next decade would attest not.
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