The 1001 Flat World Tales

Terry

Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
Even when I was a young boy at the tender age of 14, I was already getting into trouble. Big trouble. The kind you wouldn’t think a 14 year old boy and his 18 year old brother would get into. Well maybe you would expect something like this from a bunch of high school graduates and their brothers, but thats beside the point. It was a day like any other, except for the fact that it was a once in a lifetime day. My brother and his friends were all graduating soon, and a lot of them would be going off to college in separate parts of the world. We decided to celebrate the successful journey through their high school lives without getting arrested or seriously injured. Ironically our celebration plan risked both unfavorable elements. It was nearing the glorious American holiday celebrated on the 4th day of July, and fireworks were on all of our youthful minds. Young, ambitous, and full of hormones making us all ten times dumber than the average person, we set our plan in motion. Aquiring a healthy stock of bottle rockets and other fun fireworks, we made our way to a park that is often empty. Being that it was July 1st, it was a little early for the people of Honolulu to hear the graceful shriek of an airial being shot off 100 feet from their home, and our celebration was cut short by the infamous sound of sirens in the distance. Our happy moment of shooting bottle rockets and anything that caught our fancy was short lived indeed, and the running began in every direction. We split up, heading towards every escape point possible.

As a group we moved slow, but as a bunch of adrenaline pumped teens running from the cops, we would have given the national sprinting team a run for their money. We ran through small back alleys between houses and away from the park in general. Once we deemed we were a safe distance from the park, we slowed to a walk and contacted the rest of the group via cellphone. No one had gotten caught or arrested, I was surprised to say the least. Unfortunately, one of us had forgetten their backpack at the park and we needed to go back for it. The joy of heading back towards the park in our friend’s car and seeing a pair of policemen going through the bag was indescribeable. It was as if Santa had just shown you the toy you had wanted since forever, and then showed you your name on the naughty list. We were in for one hell of a day.
“Yo officer, what are you doing going through my bag?” said Jon as he slowly jogged over to the policeman going through his backpack, putting on his most confused face, the one he uses only when he is in for a lot of lieing.
“This bag is yours kid? I need to ask you a few questions. First of all, why does it smell like smoke and why did you leave it here unattended?”
“Well, it smells like smoke cause my chronic uncle that I live with is always smoking cigars around the house, everything that goes in that place comes out smelling like smoke, and I left it here cause a bunch of kids with fireworks shot some bottle rockets at me while I was walking and I dropped it when I tried to runaway.” Sometimes I idolized Jon’s ability to think up lies and excuses on a moments notice.
“Can you describe these kids with fireworks,” he said while eyeballing the rest of our little group as we stood about 20 feet behind Jon. “Because honestly I think it was all of you who were shooting off those bottle rockets and you were just dumb enough to forget your stuff when you ran, like most teenagers are apparantly.”
“Good sir, I resent that statement because I find it prejudice against young people and am planning to take it up with your boss if you do not return my bag post haste!” By this point the rest of us were doing our best to keep a straight face, but when Jon started talking like an over-civilized political figure, it was hard not to crack up with laughter. The policeman looked as his partner as if silently asking permission to beat up this punk kid right now. The 2nd policeman shook his head and the first turned back to Jon and the rest of us.
“Fine, just take your dumb bag and scram, I’m not wasting any more time on something as small as this. I want some donuts.”
“Sounds good to me” his partner said as they began to walk away toward their patrol car. I noticed an unfired bottle rocket on the ground and picked it up. I casually strolled over to Ole and said,
“Hey Ole, I’ll give you 20 bucks if you shoot this bottle rocket at the fat cop right now” (the fat cop being the one who questioned Jon).
“HA! SHOOTS THEN BRAH!” Ole shouted as he grabbed the bottle rocket, whipped out a lighter and aimed it towards the fat cop. “TIME FOR A LITTLE PEW PEW!” he yelled loudly as the bottle rocket shot towards the cop.
“YOUR PRETTY DUMB HUH OLE!?” I yelled as we all started running as fast as we could. Ole never was smart, although he looked like a smart kid with his averaged sized blonde afro and tall white guy complexion. As for me, I’m only 5′10 with black and brown hair that hung down slightly over the tops of my eyes. I always wore a look of confusion and stupidity, but in reality I was probably the smartest one there. We all ran, the fat cop making an ernest attempt to catch us, luckily his athletic looking partner just laughed as the fat cop ran out of breath after 50 feet and had to sit down. We all made it to the car parked a block or two away and drove off, making sure not to drive past the park.
“Hey uhh guys, you will never guess what happened!” Ole said as we drove toward somewhere safe.
“What Ole? Did you realise your feelings for that fat cop and want to go apologize?” Jon said sarcastically.
“Uhm, I forgot my bag at the park.”
“Well, in that case, BUY ANTOHER ONE! No ways are we going back for that thing, what did you even have in there?” Dave said, laughing about this since Ole always seemed to do the dumbest thing possible at the worst time possible.
“Actually I had your house keys in there, smart idea asking me to hold onto them haha.”
“Ole, I hate you so much you don’t even know. FINE!… Let’s go back. Hopefully the cops left without seeing it, because if they did and I get killed in my sleep by an angry overweight police officer who had the keys to my house, I’m going to have my ghost haunt you Kung-Fu style for a billion years.” Dave said, sounding completely serious, which only made it funnier for the rest of us. As the car turned around and made its way back to the park, we decided to make a quick stop at Burger King for some energy food. We definately needed our energy. After all, if the cops were there, I dared Ole to shoot another bottle rocket at them.

Slowly pulling around the corner of the park, we all leaned towards the car’s windows to see if the cops were still there. Nothing.
“Well look who lucked out this time,” Dave said as he opened his door to jog over the get Ole’s bag, not entirely trusting Ole with such a simple task like getting his own bag at this point. When he got back and climbed in the car, we drove off. Jon was looking slightly dissapointed that the cops still weren’t there. Jon was the type of guy who always pushed his luck in life, and always took risks for the simple reason of improving the fun level of his life. The most recent example was asking an extremely popular girl to prom, she said yes. I wasn’t there, but my brother who was watching with some other guys from a distance, said he turned around, smiled at them, and then turned back around and asked the popular girls best friend standing right next to her to prom as well. After laughing off a pair of slaps, he strolled casually over to the next group of unsuspecting girls.
“Hey I’m getting pretty hungry, we should go get some Taco Bell or something,” I said, but being four years younger than everyone in the group, decision making was far from my responsibility. I was quickly put back in my place by Jon,
“We just had Burger King dude, how can you possibly be hungry still. Anyways, if you want something to eat I think I saw an old shoe in the back of the car.” Jon said as he turned around in his seat in search of a shoe on the floor.
“Whatever,” I said tiredly, “where are we going and what are we gonna’ do anways?”
“We, my young friend, are going to ward theatres for a bit of fun.” responded Jon with a hint of inspiration in his voice. “However you are a bit young for the fun I have in mind so we are gonna’ drop you off at the movies so you can meet up with your friends ‘kay brah? Shoots!” he added, not even allowing me a moment to disagree. Not that I would have disagreed anyway, when my brother and his friends went to ward, they either were meeting girls that I would have no chance with anyway, or they were going to go have some old fashioned fun messing around with and annoying random people and theatre workers. The time Dave payed his ticket cost of $8 is all dimes and nickels was especially memorable, the look on the ticket vendor was priceless. Mostly though, when they headed to ward I split off to do my own thing.

“Alrite little buddy, here we are,” Jon said as we pulled up to Koko Marina Theatres, taking another stab at my age. These theatres were less crowded as ward and a lot closer to my house. I climbed out of the car, waved them off, and watched them drive away. Uninterested in calling up friends my own age, I walked home enjoying the cool breeze and quiet neighborhood scene as I thought about the days adventures. The end to a day I would not soon forget.

I awoke the next morning to the sound of my cell phone on the desk near my bed. I drowsily climbed out of bed and made my way over to the desk to see who would needed to be punished for waking me up before noon on a saturday. To my surprise no one had called, it was a text message from Jon
saying the 5 word phrase I had come to associate with a fun day, “On our way, you ready?” A grin crossed my face as I raced to get dressed for yet another day.