A few days ago I wrote a post about Dave not being my protector. This brought to mind a story from long ago that proves that I myself, at one time, was concerned more for my own safety than that of my best friend.
Back in 1991, when Ciara and I were just babes of eleven years, we used to do crazy things that no parent ever wanted to know about. My parents had a boat parked in our driveway in Brampton, and almost every night during the summer we would ask to sleep out in the little 'bedroom' that was tucked away in the bow of the boat. This was back when it was still mostly safe to do these things, without the fear of someone abducting your crazy pre-teen who was almost asking for it by walking around Brampton in their pajama's in the middle of the night.
And that is what Ciara and I did. We would wander around Heart Lake into the night, sometimes in our pajama's, sometimes in our day-glo bike shorts. What would we do, you wonder? Well, we had just taken up the beautiful art of smoking (note the sarcasm) and if we were not looking for a smoke, we were looking for a light. God, the hours, and days, and lifetime's that Ciara and I would spend looking, and asking, for a light.
So on one particularily balmy night, at around one in the morning, we were sitting out on my front lawn having just finished a vigorous round of cartwheels, when we heard, "Psssss!!". We look across the street and Karen, a neighbor, is hanging out her bedroom window beckoning to us. We saunter over and she asks us what we are up to. We say "Nothing", as cool as two eleven year olds know how to be. And then she asks us to do something for her.
PARENTS, NOW IS THE TIME TO AVERT YOUR EYES! You do not want to know what your children are up to in the middle of the night when you believe them to be safe and sound, sleeping on a driveway!
So she asks us to "deliver a package" to her boyfriend, and she will give us some cigarettes. WOAH! Here is where most kids would run screaming to their parents that a crackhead just tried to lure them into their drug den to meet the almighty drug lord that would have them by the balls for the rest of their lives. But not us. We are fearless! We can handle it! We are in our nightgowns! Like super heroes!!
So with the age old adage that God watches over drunks and sleepwalkers (of which we were neither), we proceed to walk to the address she had given us to deliver her little package. It is only around the block so it's no biggie right? She gives us the instructions to walk around the side if the house and knock on the basement window and her boyfriend would come to the window and recieve the package. We follow her instructions the way that two good little girls should. Only the person that greets us in the window is not the description of her boyfriend, but some middle age man who looks like he eats children for breakfast! I swear this guy was like Lou Ferrigno on steroids. Yeah, THAT big. He takes one look at us, turns around and tears up the basement stairs as if he is going to murder us and have a lovely meal of eyeballs and back bacon for breakfast. At least that was my perspective on it.
And then here is where I flake out on my best friend. The girl I loved then, and will love until my dying day. Everyone else might leave me in this life, and she will still be there. I turn and run as fast as my little feet will carry me. I don't even make sure that she is behind me. I am gon-zo. I ONLY slow down and stop when we are most of the way home. And then I hear a sound behind me. It is a gasping of breath, a kind of scree-ing sound that I cannot place, but I fear the worst. Has Ciara been captured? What the hell am I going to do? What would I tell my parents? But the most important thought going through my head is 'now that he is distracted, how much time do I have?'
But no. Thank goodness. It is only Ciara laughing harder then she has ever laughed before. She is doubled over hugging her stomach to ensure that her insides do not fall out from laughing so hard. She eventually calms down just enough to point a finger at me and say "You...should...have...seen...yourself!!! Your feet! Flying all over the place! You were running so fast you were kicking yourself in the ass!"
Well, I am glad that she was able to take away from it what she did. While I had visions of our faces on the front page of the newspaper with the headline reading "Two Young Girls Involved In Elaborate Drug-Ring Scheme", Ciara is laughing about my crazy legs kicking myself in my flowered, pajama-ladened ass.
It's good to know where your priorities lie.
