(PLD, I thought of this story when I read MooCow’s post here. You’ll see why.)
First part, here.
Luckily, we hadn’t backed into the hearse. Unfortunately, we had backed into the funeral home. We completely took out the gate on the side of the home. Before I had any time to say we should get out and see what damage we have have done, the guy who was driving us, T, sped off.
I checked the building over my shoulder, and there was no damage to the building itself, and it looked like the gate had sprung back to its original shape.
No biggie. T said he would call his mom when we got to swim practice and let her know what happened.
A few miles down the road, we were almost at practice, and we were ahead of 2 cars carrying our fellow swim team members. We let loose on the first 2 extinguishers, and the smoke powder billowed out the windows behind us. It was hysterical.
I grabbed the 3rd extinguisher, and I told the freshman to grab the 4th one. I sprayed another volley out the window, and the freshman couldn’t figure out how to operate his. I showed him where to pull the pin, and where to squeeze, and suddenly there was an explosion of yellow powder inside the car.
We pulled over, ditched the canisters on the side of the road, and T said he would clean out the car after practice. We we got to practice, T called his mom, told her where he had parked, and then jumped into the pool with the rest of us.
About 30 minutes later his mom stormed into the pool area and she was pissed. She yanked out of the pool by his arm, and draged him into the lobby. T never came back from the locker room.
Later that night, I got a call from T. He had visited the funeral home with his mom, and tried to explain what had happened. He apologized, and offered to pay for any damages. He told me the damage was limited to an aluminum gate, available at any hardware store. Apparently, that wasn’t good enough for the woman at the funeral home. She lost her shit, and told T’s mom that it sounded like an explosion went off and that the building was falling down when we hit the gate. I’m not sure how that could be true, since I was in the car, and it didn’t sound anything like that. Regardless, the woman wanted to sue T. So T’s mom calls her sister, a lawyer, over for dinner.
T explains about the accident, and the fire extinguishers. His aunt explains that fire extinguishers have UPS type codes on them that denote where they are supposed to be located. If anyone found those containers, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out how they got to our swim practice location from our high school. She suggested we take a pre-emptive measure, and let the school know about it from us first.
The next morning, we went into the dean’s office, and let him know that we took 4 fire extinguishers, and where they probably were now. He gave us 5 days of detention a piece, and told us to pay for the fire extinguishers. We did not implicate the freshman, as I was a senior, and could care less about my “behavioral standing” and T just didn’t care. We didn’t want to but a black mark on the freshman’s high school career so early. So we made him pay for the fire extinguishers. That was the price of our support. $200.
The first day of detention, T and I wandered in and sat down. We were to remain silent, and weren’t allowed to do anything, not even homework. After about 10 minutes, our track coach came into the class. He looked at the teacher running detention and said, “I need 2 students to scrub the gymnasium floor.”
The teacher gestured to the classroom absentmindedly, “Have your pick.”
Coach looked at us and pointed with both hands, “You two. Come with me.”
We grabbed our stuff and followed him into the hallway. We started walking down the hall in the direction of the gym when he stopped us, “Where the hell are you two going?”
“Uh. The gym?”
“Go home. Dummies.”
He did the same thing to get us out of detention the next day.
The third day, we walked in and he was already sitting at the desk at the head of the room. We took our seats, and everything was quiet for about 10 minutes.
“I’m going to the bathroom. [My last name], make sure no one talks.”
“Yes, sir.”
As soon as he left the room, everyone began talking. Freakin’ delinquents. After a few minutes, the lookout at the door let us know that he was headed up the hallway at a quick jog. We were still taking out seats when he walked in. Busted.
“[My last name] was anyone talking or out of their seat while I was gone?” he asked, with a twinkle in his eye.
“Uh. No, sir?”
“T, is he lying?”
“No, sir.”
“Good. You can both go.”
The next two days he got to us even before we made it to detention, and told us that he had removed our names from the detention list. We wouldn’t even need to show up. He also called us dickheads, told us how dangerous it was to steal fire extinguishers, and then told us that we had used up our free passes.
That, combined with the opportunity to fling myself 12 feet in the air while holding onto a flimsy fiberglass pole, made for one of the best years of high school. That and all the teenaged sex.
P.S. T ended up buying the funeral home a new gate, when his aunt got all lawyerly on them.
