Yesterday, Jon mentioned a little… incident that happened while he was on a date and apparently “tryin’ to get some”. Ahem. Here now is the never before revealed events that took place before, during, and just after he discovered his “Love Chariot” (“P*ssy Wagon” was voted down) had been taken advantage of.
First, a little background: We lived in a small town. Not much to do there. At the time, as most high school students do, we lived for the weekends. For us, that meant going to the movies together or hanging out together – we didn’t really care, just as long as we were all there. “We” consisted of Jon, Mabel, Matt, Aubrey, and me. Great times were had. To me, it oftened seemed like all we had were each other to keep us from going crazy.
This would be a good time to tell you that, this story is coming from my view point, obviously, and my recollections are often colored with lots of emotion cause that’s just how I roll. I loved those times and even though we’re all different people now, I will always adore the 15/16/17 year old versions of us and my writing will reflect that. Ok. As you were.
So, as we were coming into one of these cherished weekends, plans were being made but they were quickly shot down. Two of our own were branching out to see a movie together — without the rest of us. How dare they! The three of us who were left behind faced a weekend — or at the very least, a Friday night — that didn’t seem as fun anymore. All we could do was sit there. Sit there and stew.
And plot against them.
It came together pretty quickly, and considering our individual backgrounds, I would have to point the finger at Matt for the idea. We were going to play a prank on Jon — let’s cover his car with shaving cream! Somewhere along the way, condoms were added to the plan in order to enhance an already embarrassing situation. But where should we get such things? I’m going to go ahead and say that we actually thought a little bit about what we were doing and decided not to buy the condoms in Brawley because with the town being so small, the littlest thing would soon be known (and often distorted to such dizzying heights) by everyone in town. That’s the way it was then, still is that way now. Example: Before the days of driver’s licenses, Mabel and I used to walk home together. Why? Because we were friends but even moreso, our respective houses were on the same side of town. Even if we weren’t friends, chances are we would have walked the same path by virtue of where we lived. But could anyone else surmise this? No. They thought we were dating. Why else would we walk together? It must be that. At least one person asked me if this was true and I think they were a little dissapointed when I told them the truth. But I digress… where were we? Oh, yes. Condoms.
So we decided to buy them in El Centro. It made sense since, we didn’t want anyone in Brawley to see what we were doing and the movie theater they were at was in Imperial, 3 miles outside of E.C. Also, just to clarify, when I say “we bought them” I mean Mabel bought them. As always, Mabel was the money behind the operation. I never had money back then. Ever. Not sure Matt did either. But Mabel was flush with it and had no qualms about buying what we needed. We stopped at the Fastrip (not sure if it changed over to Big John’s yet) on main in El Centro. Your typical gas and go type place. And this scene always makes me laugh because we went in there on a mission. Determined to get what we came to get and as soon as we walked in the door, Matt and I made a hasty retreat to the magazine section leaving Mabel to take all of the heat at the counter. Classic. Mabel was also very brave as well. She didn’t flinch, she just picked out what she wanted — shaving cream, paper towels, and condoms — bought it and left… and Matt and I followed her out of the store. Now I can only guess what the cashier thought as we were leaving, but knowing what I know about the world now, he probably didn’t think about us at all. At the time though, it felt like we were on a bank heist. It was awesome. Next stop: The Movies.
Yes, they called the theater “The Movies”. As in, “What’s playing at the movies?” Haw. Haw. Welcome to the Imperial Valley.
Jon’s car was pretty easy to spot. Not many blue camaros around town. Luckily for us, he had parked out on the very edge of the parking lot so we had lots of access to the car and so, we went to work.
Up until that point in my high school career, hell, even all of my childhood, I had never done anything like this. I’m not saying this to make myself sound any better as this was more of a side effect of my Dad’s parenting (His thoughts regarding us stealing anything: “If I ever hear of you stealing, you’d better pray the police catch you first.” Hence, no stealing.). I can’t fault him though. I have to say, his kids turned out ok. (Thanks Dad.)
Soon, there was shaving cream everywhere. And condoms too. And condoms filled with shaving cream. Doing this made three dimensional representations of what they were intended to house and looking at them was humorous and disturbing at the same time. We decided to scrawl “Just Married” on the trunk door, y’know, cause we’re funny like that.
We stepped back and admired our work of art and then we unwrapped the roll of paper towels and left them there so he could clean up a little (we weren’t totally heartless). I can’t remember if we had strewn some of the paper towel on the car or not. I’m hoping not because the shaving cream would have been enough but part of me is thinking that we did.
This next part is kind of fuzzy. I’m not sure what we did next but I’m fairly certain we went back to El Centro to eat. I say this only because what happened next and how I remember it, us coming from El Centro is the only possible way it could have happened.
Highway 86 runs from Brawley, through Imperial and El Centro and finally gets you to Interstate 8. Go right, you’re on your way to San Diego. Left, you’re headed to Yuma, AZ. “The Movies” sits right on 86 and so can be seen as you drive either to or from Brawley to or from El Centro. We were headed in the Brawley direction, to go home and more importantly to see if they had discovered our handiwork. As we neared the theater, we noticed that just about all the cars were gone, the exception being Jon’s car. As we slowed down a little to assess the situation I noticed a couple of people exiting the theater. I’ll give you just one guess who it was… I prompted Mabel to drive faster as we were in danger of being spotted (although, he probably would have figured it out anyway. I talked to Jon later and he recounted that he came out to his car being covered with crap and as he looks up, he sees Mabel’s truck driving by. It was so perfect that even if we tried, we couldn’t have planned it.). We sped off into the night, laughing, not really realizing the damage we had done not only to his evening but to his parents’ car.
*EDIT* (Jon refreshed my memory as to what happened the next day.) The next day, we were to go from door to door offering to “Holiday up” people’s mailboxes for a fee in order to raise funds for the Junior Class Treasury (Mabel and I were members of the class council. Also, by “Holiday up” I mean, tying some random pine tree… fronds?… to the mailbox poles with some red ribbon and spray painting some snow on them which was realistic because it snowed down there all the time.) I’m not sure if we picked up Jon or if we were all to meet at the High School but either way, Jon came over to the truck (and I’m sure Mabel and I were trying really hard to supress laughter )and he said nothing, he just reached into his pocket and handed me an unopened condom. It was the best possible response he could’ve given me.
I remember talking with Aubrey’s Mom – I always had a better relationship with her Mom than I did with her – later that day and she told me that they had to go to the car wash for the rest of their date. I’m sure I laughed at this but she mentioned that shaving cream oxidizes the paint on the car and that we may have done some damage. I stopped laughing. I imagined all of the lines and words and crap that we left all over his car, and worse yet, the gigantic penis shaped marks that would be there for possibly eternity and I felt bad. I called him and he let me know that he was going to take the car out to wash it – again – and I pleaded with him to let me help. He obliged and we washed the car as best as we could at the Do-it-yourself car wash just down the street from my house.
I’m not sure what happened to car after that. I know we had at least one other adventure in it (the spin out into the farmer’s field just down the road from Matt’s house) but that’s a story for another blog post.
And that’s it. That’s the story.
If the other two parties have anything to add or take away, please do so in the comments.
Jon, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. But considering the movie you saw prior, you should be thanking us for adding some humor to your evening.
Whatever
Condoms, Pranks, Shaving Cream
Todd: It is great to be here, Duane.
Katie: Hello
