#548: Bad Boys

 

GETTING MORE TALE #548: Bad Boys

I was speaking to a friend’s son the other day.  He’s in his late teens.  We chatted about parents and rules and chores and I realized, “The ‘bad’ stuff I used to do as a kid is nothing compared to what teenagers think is ‘bad’ today.”  When I was teenager, I had never seen a drug.  I didn’t know any kids who drank.  None of my friends had tattoos.  We liked heavy metal music, which had an aura of evil, but that was just the image.  Our lives were pretty mundane…but we did have our fun.

My buddy Bob was the leader when we were growing up.  He was creative and had all the best ideas.  We invented our own games.  A version of street volleyball with no net was one.  A backyard obstacle course made of chairs and sprinklers was another.  I have a book full of drawings we made for video game ideas we planned on selling to Atari.  There is a huge binder (3″)  filled with action figure ideas — we called it “Death Team”  It was a years-long project that included written story lines and an audio sketch.  We imagined the AC/DC instrumental “D.T.” was their theme song.  We even made an elaborate board game using old cardboard, a lot of tape, and a bag of army men.  Making things (or modifying them) was a big part of our creative process.  In 9th grade, we made elaborate cardboard guitars for air guitar purposes.  We used yardsticks as the guitar necks, and the bodies were cut from old boxes.  We then painted them, using my mom’s workshop with dozens of colours to choose from.  We really let it loose for Halloween.  We started preparing for Halloween in late August.  We began by making heads out of papier-mâché. Ours were crude, but when dressed up with sunglasses, hats or wigs, did the trick. Then we would begin working on an audio tape. This was a 60-minute long compilation of scary bits from Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden albums. We hid some speakers outside and would play the tape on a loop for background scary sounds.   Kids loved it.  Really small ones were scared, so we had to stop the tape and turn on the lights for them, but 95% thought it was awesome (including parents).  We’d see kids across the street, and they’d make a beeline for our house as soon as they saw it.  My favourite costume was the one I made in grade 10:  Alice Cooper.

We also did a bunch of things that we didn’t tell our parents about.  My mother is about to read about some of these things for the first time.

We loved to make prank calls.  In the days before call display, Bob and I were the kings.  My parents went out every single Wednesday night to take my sister to dance classes.  Bob came over, we watched music videos, ate chips, and made prank calls.  We didn’t dial random numbers like most kids.  We looked up names that we thought were funny in the phone book, and called them.  There was one name in the phone book that Bob found especially amusing: Hans.  So Bob called up Hans and sang him a little song.  “Hans, hans, hans and feet, I have hans and feet.”  Somebody named Price was met with the phone call, “Come on down, the price is right!”  We really thought we were the most hilarious pair in the world.  Then we started pretending we were calling from the Coca Cola company and asking people if they preferred “New” Coke to old Coke.  Only Bob had a deep enough voice to fool anyone.

Then, there was the time I nailed “Phat Curtis” in the back of the neck with a projectile I named “The Killerang”.  When I was really young, I know I hit Mrs. Reddekopp’s car right in the middle of the hood with one of Bob’s lawn darts.  Bob reluctantly retrieved my errant dart, because I was too scared to get it.  “You can never ever tell anyone about this,” he cautioned me.  We knew that if we kept quiet, everybody would assume another neighbor kid, George, did it.  That’s exactly what happened.

Like many other kids of the 80s, we recorded comedy sketches on tape.  I have seven volumes of “Mike and Bob” on cassette here.  Having played them recently, I can assure you that you are missing out on nothing.  We sure did have fun making those tapes, but I can see why Bob found them embarrassing a few years later.  The recordings usually took place at my house, in the basement or garage.  His parents were pretty strict.

On recording nights, we had to stock up on snacks.  The only place within walking distance was the Little Short Stop at Stanley Park Mall, long gone now.  We spent many, many days and nights at the Short Stop over the years, pouring over comic books, Star Wars (or Indiana Jones) cards, and candy bars.  Later on it was rock magazines.  Our snack fix during this period was ketchup flavoured potato chips.  The thicker that ketchup dust, the better.  When we didn’t get ketchup, we got dill pickle.  It was only a 10 minute walk to the mall, but on those recording nights, we probably took half an hour each way.  We were busy ringing doorbells.

“Nicky Nicky Nine Door” was what they called it, but we were just being little shits.  We would choose houses on the way to the store, ring the doorbell and then hide in the bushes.  Once or twice, Bob was almost caught.  Sometimes we’d find a house we really liked and hit him up on the way to the store and on the way back.  And sometimes, a third for good measure.

We bored of “Nicky Nicky Nine Door” and soon found a new night time occupation:  walking around the nearby public school.  Stanley Park Sr. Public School was not locked at night.  At least, it wasn’t until we were caught.  Bob and I would wander the hallways, and buy a pop from the Pepsi machine inside.  We didn’t vandalize, and we didn’t steal.  All we did was go in and buy a can of soda for each of us.  The custodian never seemed to be around, but one night, they were.  They told us to get out, we were trespassing!  Bob asked, “But can I buy my can of pop still?”  The custodian said sure, so Bob walked over to the pop machine, bought his soda, thanked the guy, and left!  Is it still trespassing if you buy merchandise?  We didn’t think so!

That school was the site of many of our escapades.  Most of them were benign:  baseball in the park, basketball on the courts, and later on, tennis.  We had many late night tennis matches.  We ran sprints, we did the long jump, we rode our bikes.  When we didn’t have a ghetto blaster playing, we were probably singing.  George would often provide the boom box, loaded up with Kiss, Black Sabbath, or Iron Maiden.  When boredom set in, our activities became more mischievous.  Bob and George were skilled at climbing up to the school’s roof to retrieve lost tennis balls and basketballs.  One cold Sunday afternoon, Bob decided he wanted to throw his old bike off the roof.  We got a rope, Bob climbed up onto the roof, and then hauled the bike up by the rope.  He backed up, made a running start, and tossed the bike off.  There was barely any damage!  He went for round two, and the front wheel was heavily dented.  As he hauled it up one more time for round three, a man in a car drove up to us and told us to leave.  Bob asked, “So I can’t throw my bike off this roof?”  Wordlessly the man shook his head.  Who knew you couldn’t just throw a bike off a roof?  It was his bike, right?  No harm no foul?

It’s funny to look back at these moments and realize, these were the best times of our childhoods.  I don’t think Bob would want his kids to read this.  For that reason, I’m leaving out other sordid details and I’ll deny everything else.  For example, we may or may not have spelled the word “FUCK” on the lawn of the school in strips of fresh sod.  I can’t confirm or deny that we scratched KISS and IRON MAIDEN in the school doors with paper clips.  Both of us had pellet guns, and I may or may not have fired a round through George’s mom’s laundry.  My dad found pellets in the fence.  He knew what we were up to.  We denied.  We water-ballooned George’s bedroom window.  We would hide behind the fence, laughing, listening to him singing “Love Gun” loudly and out of key in his room.

We knew that not all these activities were particularly “good” behaviour (that’s why we didn’t tell our parents), but we considered it all pretty innocent.  We did well in school.  Both of us got into the schools we wanted to go to.  He has a large family and I’m happily married to a beautiful wife.  That leads us into the last story.

At my wedding, Bob decided he wanted to make a short speech, and tell a story about us.  It was so true, and so funny, that I had tears in my eyes.  I mentioned earlier that Bob’s parents were stricter than mine.  As such, Bob was not allowed to eat any sweet cereals for breakfast.  He complained and complained of shredded wheat.  He also was not really allowed to indulge himself in snacks at home, and he really loved our microwave oven.  This is how Bob invented some of his classic foods and beverages:

  • The Froot Loops dog – A hot dog topped with Froot Loops and any other toppings of your choice.
  • Froot Loops orange juice – A glass of orange juice with a handful of Froot Loops as a garnish.
  • Froot Loops swamp water – combine milk, orange juice and grape juice in one glass.  Top with Froot Loops and serve.  In case of Froot Loop shortage, substitute with Apple Jacks.

Those were the times of our lives.

 

 

34 comments

  2. I just puked in my mouth over the thought of loops and hot dogs! Whut? We all have done goofy things growing up…
    One of my fav’s was…
    Tbone worked at a garage when he was 18 and he would always close up Fridays and Saturday nights at 11 (we would be the only 2 there) Across the street was a bar and outside the bar from our viewpoint was a payphone …
    whenever we seen people leaving /entering the Bar we would call the phone! Amazing how many sober/drunks would pick up…hahaha…we had some great conversations! hahaha….
    thats about the only clean one i can talk about….hahaha

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    1. It’s true Deke…if you deprive your kids of “sweet cereal” then they will find a way, any way at all, of getting Froot Loops in their mouths!

      That is a great prank call story Deke…loved it. Don’t you wish you could have recorded that?

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  3. My goodness, your pranks seem so innocent by today’s standards. Poor George got blamed for everything that happened it seems. I can’t believe that the school was not locked in those days. You and Bob had a role in changing that policy.
    I am quite sure that Bob would not want his boys to know the things he did as a kid, especially throwing his bike off a roof….not once, but twice.

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  5. My friends and I did some of the same things, and some worse.

    We used to throw snowballs at cars and sometimes run out in front of them. One driver stopped and came back and told my uncle. My uncle got the horse whip to punish us. Then he told us that he had run over a man at night that walked in front of his car and the man died. We never did that stupid prank again. He did not whip us. He didn’t have to. His story and just the threat os the whip scared us straight.

    Speaking if nicky nine door, we did that a few times until we picked the wrong guy. This guy chased us in his car. He went so far as to almost run us over on our bikes in a school soccer field. We got away but heard he had the cops haul a bunch of other kids off to the police station. Later on the other kids, who were older and bigger than us threatened to kick our asses for being falsely accused. We never did that again.

    That was a couple of the stories I can tell. They get progressively worse from there.

    I would say that the kids back then were just as bad as today. It just depended on who you hung around with.

    My daughter is a good student that plays at a high level sport and doesn’t do any of the bad stuff I did. Her friends are all good kids. But I have neices and nephews that are considered “bad”. I tell their parents that I was “bad” too and I can relate to them.

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  6. Wow, was I ever a boring kid. We never got up to too much except road hockey and playing Star Wars. We read a lot of books and spent the rest of our time outside.

    Antics? Um… Dude, I grew up (I realize now fiarly sheltered) in a farming town of 300 people. We were a 20 minute drive to a town of 1500 people, all farms the whole way there…

    Cool post, dude! And excellent story telling.

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  9. Ha! Yas! I got up to similar shenanigans when I was younger. Great times, huh? There’s stuff I look back on and think that perhaps it was a bit embarrassing or too far, but that’s what’s you do growing up.

    Prank calls to friends’ parents when you’re out and about, drawing fake movie posters and creating football teams and wrestlers… all good fun.

    Video games pulled me away from a lot of the trouble that friends fell into as I got older. I’d sooner prank call the takeaway place across the street.

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    1. We never particular got into video games. We played a lot of Atari as kids, but those games weren’t designed to play all day. 15 minutes and you’re switching cartridges!

      Incidentally I wish I still kept my high scores, because I may have beat my all time best Dig Dug score last night.

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      1. Man, I used to keep a wee notepad with scores from the old games. Especially those that didn’t have a game save or restore point (old Spectrum ZX stuff). My mate had an Atari and I used to play a few games of that when I hung out at his. Like you say, it was a few minutes and then it was something else.

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  10. That’s pretty great. Dave and I used to use the phone book for prank calls too. I remember him leaving a message on an answering machine that belonged to someone with the last name Mossburger. It was something about an order of moldy fries with the mossy burger. Lol.

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      1. Yeah I guess that’s a little bad. My dad had an air-rifle when he was young but I think he just shot tin cans with it

        The pseudo-bad things that I have done include-
        – (accidentally) kicking an apple at the strictest teacher’s head.
        – Being boosted up by friends to reach into the gutter (in plain view of the science department’s office)
        – (accidentally) walking in on a pizza party for someone else, and then with a friend, unintentionally eating some before realising.
        – Abusing the hell out of “Airdrop” on Ipads by continuously spamming people
        Pretty lame in all honesty

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        1. OK you’ll have to explain to me what Airdrop is.

          Sounds like a lot of your stuff has been accidental and that’s just fine!

          My dad says he once shot at a cat with his pellet gun when he was a kid. So that’s where I got it from I guess. I never shot at anything bigger than a squirrel, and the neighbour’s laundry,

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      2. Right, Airdrop. (This one was definitely not accidental)

        Ipads have a feature where you can share files across to other Ipads with Bluetooth. So when you select, say a photo, and then select Airdrop, a screen comes up with little icons for everyone nearby with bluetooth enabled.

        When you tapped on their icon an “accept/decline” menu appeared on their screen over whatever they were doing. (you see what I’m getting at here)

        So if you rapid tapped constantly on one persons portrait the menu would appear and disappear constantly, without any time in between for them to do anything else or disable Bluetooth. If you renamed your Ipad to something inconspicuous it allowed you to do this to anyone in your high school class without them being able to figure out who it was

        So after a little while of me doing that to many people, they all started turning their Bluetooth off to prevent this.

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        1. One other thing I did was partake in a large game of “Bullshit” (the card game) in the middle of class once

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