Adolecent Ignorance--Actually, We Were In College

We were bored so we decided to get off campus and see what we could get into. Although we were all 20+ we decided to go (word we buried)-knocking. In case you’re not familiar with this, you just run up to people’s homes, knock on the door or beat on the window really hard, run off somewhere where you can see them and they can’t see you and laugh when they come to the door looking for whomever they thought was at the door. Sounds right foolish when you put it on paper, but for us it was amusing. So that was the plan this particular Thursday night, which is college night at one of the local haunts, but we decided we weren’t in the mood for that.

We headed to Teon’s house since he was a native and parked. We chose to walk a few streets over from where he lived so we’d be somewhere we people in the neighborhood might not know who he was and tell his mom. We began knocking on doors and running. It was all good until this one dude didn’t think it was funny and he fired a gun in the air. It was just a warning shot, but it scared the hell out of me. The sight of the spark that the gun made in the still of that crisp autumn night is forever indelibly etched in my mind. Think I didn’t show Carl Lewis up that night? I ran like it was no tomorrow. All three of us did. When we stopped running we huddled on a street near a wooded area to catch our breath and to each express how frightening it was to hear and see the flicker of that gun. This is not the first time we had engaged in behavior like this, but this was the first time someone fired a shot. The most someone had ever done up until this day was throw something through their window. That particular night when we walked off, we were laughing like, that’s their dumb azz cause they gotta fix that window.

Anyway, that night after we caught our breath we still hadn’t had enough, but we decided to table the (word we buried)-knocking for the night. At the time not too far from the wooded area where we huddled the land was being prepared for construction. You know how they push that dirt around for like 2 months before you actually see any pipes in the ground or concrete blocks? Yeah, that’s what it looked like. Behind that was an old folks home that had already been built. There was one of those big dump trucksout there. Antwan decided to get in the truck (at me and Teon’s behest) and start it up and run it into the old folks’ home. Someone had left the keys in the truck so that’s how he was gonna be able to start it. He tried to turn the engine over like three times but he couldn’t get it to come on. It would make the sound like it was going to crank, but it wouldn’t completely fire. Apparently, the people in the old folks home were watching us because we saw the blinds flutter and soon heard sirens.

We ran like hell across the dirt that was there for the grocery store and into the wooded area that we huddled at earlier. There were like three cop cars because we saw the blue lights as we were dipping off in the woods. Of course I think I’m smarter than the police so I was like we need to run in the water so in case they have dogs they will lose our scent. Let a joker watch one episode of Matlock. Anyway, we heard footsteps that were not our own. We figured the police were on foot trying to scare us. There weren’t probably really gonna traipse through the woods to find us but they were definitely gonna try to rattle us. But me, I’m not gonna be rattled—even when I’m in the wrong. To a fault I can be wrong and strong and think nothing of it. We were navigating the woods but being ever so careful as not to make too much noise. We were signally each other and all trying to make sure that we all made it out of this thing safely. Eventually we no longer heard the additional footsteps so we figured the coast was clear. We ran up out of the woods and got back on the main street. (Ladynaynay this happened on the corner of Rock Quary and Raleigh Blvd just as a point of reference.)

Me still over analyzing things and thinking that I was “on the run” suggested that we all switch shirts and try to make ourselves look different in case the po-po rolled past looking for three black guys who fit our description. The realism is that if they did roll past they still would have known that it was us, but in my mind I thought I was one-upping the man. We just needed take our azzes home and do some studying.

Once we got back to T’s house we did ride back up to the scene of the crime and the police were still there. There was only one car now, but we really felt like we had beaten the man. We rolled on the Waffle House, (by the way if you don’t know bout the Waffle House shame one you) got a bite to eat and tripped about the events of the day.