I'll Always Remember Them Well, Especially Neal.

         Rule number one for getting through high school without incident is; never ever reveal to your friends that your parents will be out of town for the weekend. Especially if you've ever partied at any of their houses while their parents were gone. In High school you have two options, you can opt out of the party scene all together, that means never attending a single party as long as you live with your parents (this option comes recommended by the way) OR you have the obligation of hosting such an event if your parents go out of town weather you want to or not. The logic makes sense when you think about it. High Schoolers are new to partying so the excitement of such an event is through the roof, and what makes it even more exciting is the opportunity drink indoors is somewhat rare. No one wants to host a party at their parents house, it's an obligation if you expect to be welcome anywhere else.
         I personally hosted about four "official parties" at my parents house while living there and a few small gatherings that didn't really qualify as full on parties. I think when there's under ten patrons and none are female, it's downgraded from "party" to "hanging out, playing video games (with beer)". It was the aftermath one of the official parties that I narrowly escaped a summer of being grounded. It wasn't easy, I had to fabricate quite a tale, and on the fly to accomplish this.
          After a party, it's essential to clean more thoroughly than you've ever cleaned before and then check everything two more times. At least in my case, a single bottle cap that fell behind the couch could be enough evidence to destroy my entire summer vacation even if discovered a year later. After a particularly drunken night, with head aching I cleaned every corner of the house, I found a flattened foil MGD label between the pages of a dictionary on the shelf (Thanks a lot Steven. I don't know why but to this day I blame Steven for that, maybe it's because he peed in a Corona bottle and conned me into drinking it. That kind of behavior can get you blamed for ten things you didn't do as well.....he even put it in the fridge). After combing through every bush in the back yard for cigarette butts, I was certain that I had accounted for everything. One thing I didn't consider was; it's not always what's found that can incriminate you but what's missing.
          In accordance with party protocol, I made sure I wasn't home when my parents got back. It's always best to avoid that awkward moment when they arrive (Me sitting casually on the couch of a freshly cleaned house as my parents start sniffing the smell of still moist Resolve on the part of the carpet that is now mysteriously cleaner than the rest). So I sauntered up to the front yard later in the day to find my dad watering the plants as expected. I chose a simple "Hey dad" to casually greet him with. Instead of getting a "Hey" back he replied with,
          "Where's the wine bottle?" My brain went into instant hyper drive. A response, a good response was required within half of one second at the most. The first thought in my head didn't help, it was a visual flashback of where the wine bottle actually went. I was sitting on one side of the dining room table with everyone at the party standing shoulder to shoulder around it. The only other person sitting was my friend Devon. He was opposite me, the long way. He would take a swig then send the bottle sliding down the table as if it were a bar in an old Western movie where I would catch it and repeat the swig-then-slide motion back to Devon which caused a triumphant eruption of cheers from the audience every time. This proceeded until the finale where Devon took the last swig then turned it upside down over his head with a cheer igniting a short lived dance party to White Zombie.
          "Oh...that wine bottle" I said confidently to buy myself the amount of seconds it took my dad to say,
          "Yeah...THAT wine bottle" It worked, sorta. As he said those four short words affirming his discontent I came up with something. Well... at least something I could fudge my way through over the next ten seconds which by comparison was better than nothing. Coming up with a convincing lie is hard. Making up the next word as the current B.S. word is leaving your lips is harder. The trick is to prioritize the correct cadence and tone over plausibility of the story or you're dead where you stand. One of the few advantages to being a creative person is being able to think quick. It's a skill that I've had an edge on the rest of my peers for as long as I can remember. I'm not the smartest guy on the block, nor am I known for being very reasonable or rational, but I can come up with a halfway decent idea faster than most in almost any circumstance. So I said:
          "That explains why Ryan acted so weird when he left with it". I chose Ryan because he was the closest friend I had that my Dad had not met yet. I knew as soon as I dropped his name I might need him later to corroborate something but didn't want to incriminate someone whom my father already knew for a few different reasons. I should back up here and explain an important detail. My parents said it was OK to have a couple friends over to play video games while they were gone. I used this clause to my full advantage and continued on.
          "I had Mark, Kiel, and Steven over to play video games when Ryan showed up and suggested that we drink the wine bottle he was holding. I thought he brought it over so I told him to take it somewhere else. He must have taken it out of the fridge moments before without me seeing. That would explain why he looked at me weird when he agreed and left with it". Whew! that wasn't half bad. I was somewhat proud of myself but I could tell my dad wasn't going for it.
          "Oh yeah? well if Ryan just came in here and robbed me last night, then I'd like to speak with him. What's his number?" My dad asked. He was calling my bluff, OK don't panic, this is why you chose Ryan over Mark or Steven. Time to fire back and not seem like you're firing back.
          "I don't have his number, I can get it for you though, do you have to call him?", I pleaded. Then I got lucky and my dad bought me a day to tie up the fast amounting loose ends of my tale.
          "As a matter of fact, I'd like to speak with him in person", he proclaimed. I believe my dad chose this route so he could better sniff out if Ryan was lying because it's so hard to tell over the phone. That evening I got a hold of Ryan and over a pretty hilarious ass-kissing negotiation we settled on $50 for him to come apologize to my dad for something he didn't do. It could have been more, and I think Ryan knew that. I believe after all my pathetic pleading he sympathized with my situation and found my tall tale too funny to not be a part of himself. Furthermore, I believe Ryan is of the rare type that actually enjoys this kind of stuff, and is quite good at it.
         The next day, Standing just over six feet tall with slicked back flaming red hair, Ryan showed up to my parents door, hands in the pockets of his black leather jacket, bearing a rehearsed solemn look on his face. He and my dad left for a stroll around the block and returned after the longest fifteen minutes of my life. My dad told me later on that night that his talk with Ryan went very well and that he thinks there's hope for him yet. It was bittersweet victory. My feelings of guilt trumped my thrill of Ryan's success. I was proud of my execution of the fabricated story on the fly, happy that I wasn't grounded, but learned a bigger lesson that day. Lying to your parents whom you'll be connected to somehow for most of the rest of your life, isn't worth it.
          At school the next day I showed up to my standard lunch table a little late and was greeted with smirks and a few pats on the back as I produced a crumpled fifty dollar bill and slid it over to Ryan who had obviously just finished his end of the story to the rest of the table.
          "Ya know, I had a great talk with your pa, It made me realize that I need to change my wondering path and stop to think before I do something as silly as that again" He sarcastically announced so everyone could hear it. I hung my head in shame.          
       
          Another story that came out of the few parties I hosted at my parents house involved Ryan as well but it's mostly about our mutual friend Kiel. Kiel was a good guy. He was an honest friend who meant well, although he had a penchant for getting in trouble at almost every turn in his life. He would blame it on his shit luck but once in a while one of us guys would carefully remind him that it was his poor decision making that landed him in the situation he was currently complaining about. I honestly felt bad for him most of they time because I could see that he wasn't any worse of a guy than the rest of us, he just got caught more often. Of course my sympathetic opinion would change for a few weeks every time his antics involved me. Although even at the time these events occurred, I recognized that I had participated in Kiel's contagious bad decision making somewhere along the way to land myself standing next to him knee deep in freezing mud at five in the morning with a hangover.
          After a long fun get together at my house, most of the patrons had gone home and all that was left were some empty bottles and my core group of buddies crashing on various soft surfaces around the house. I was passed out in my own bed that at the moment was being shared by two or three others as well when I got a tap on my shoulder. It was Kiel.
          "Hey Jon" Kiel whispered, "Ryan needs to get home, can I take your van to go drop him off?"
          "Are you kidding? you've been drinking and that's my mom's van, Ryan can walk" I replied.
          "It's four in the morning I haven't drank for three hours, Ryan's mom wakes up in a little while and is gonna flip if Ryan's not there, I promise I'll just go there and back and drive the speed limit the whole way" Kiel pleaded. Now this had bad idea written all over it but I was half asleep and also felt that Ryan would have done it for me. I also appreciated Kiel's dedication as a friend to take on the cause on behalf of Ryan. The camaraderie we all shared in looking out for each other seemed to trump any common sense I had at the moment and I gave him the keys. I went back to sleep immediately. It seemed like no time had passed at all when I was woken up by the same tapping from Kiel followed by the familiar whisper.
           "Jon, Jon wake up", He insisted.
           "What, I'm sleeping, what is it? Is Ryan home? is-is everything ok?" I stuttered. The sleeping bodies around me started groaning.
          "Yeah, Ryan's home everything's fine, It's just I need your dad's truck now, The van got stuck in some mud and I can't get it out. I need the truck to pull it out."
          -"Mud?? Where? why is it stuck in mud? what the hell?" I snapped. The groaning around me had stopped and turned into fake sleeping noises to avoid recruitment for the issue at hand. Kiel continued;
          "Well you know that dirt road behind your house? -after I dropped off Ryan I thought I'd take it for a little off-roading you know?"-
          -"No I don't know, you said straight there and straight back! Off-roading? Dammit Kiel!" I barked growing louder in my tone. I was up now and putting my jeans on in a panic. Kiel continued on a little about how the heavy rain made for unusual conditions for another few sentences before I told him to shut his mouth. The sun was coming up now turning the heavy rain clouds from giant pissing blobs of darkness into giant grey pissing blobs of darkness. We drove my dad's '83 Toyota pickup truck to the site where I found my poor mom's van in a puddle of mud so deep that you couldn't see the wheels.
           I yelled something like "Ahhhh, Kiel! What have you done? to which he went on with his story about how whenever he tried to drive out of it it just dug deeper.
           "Shut up Kiel!" I shouted, quickly reenforcing the Kiel-silence clause.
           We used some tie downs to hook up the truck to the van and started trying to pull it out. The tires of the truck were just spinning and getting nowhere. We worked for hours, freezing cold in knee deep mud digging a trench for the van to hopefully use to crawl out. We tried everything we could think of finally landing on the bright idea to have Kiel jump up and down in the back of the pickup while I gassed it. Every time he landed it would get just enough traction to pull the van an inch forward. Then a loud snap! The truck heaved forward and jumping Kiel tumbled out the back, landing in the mud. I was sure the tow straps had broke.
          "Did the Tow straps break?" I shouted without asking if Kiel was alright.
          "Nope, tow straps are fine, looks like they ripped off the bumper of the truck though". Kiel commented from a puddle of mud behind the truck. I wanted to cry. I didn't though and we kept at it. We threw the bumper in the back, tied the straps to a more secure part of the truck and went for another attempt at the hopping method. After a few more minutes of little inches forward matched with cheers from a bouncing Kiel, like Luke's X-wing fighter, the van gurgled out of the Dagobah system victoriously. It even seemed to float there for a moment as John Williams scored the triumphant moment in my head.
          We drove the van and the truck to West Seattle, about a 45 minute drive from my house, leaving all my partied out friends to sleep the morning away. It was in West Seattle where Kiel knew a guy who owned a welder. we explained our situation exhausted and covered in still wet mud. The guy smiled and helped us out. He welded the bumper back on and we took both vehicles through a car wash. We returned to my parents house where people were just waking up and making coffee. Somehow less than an hour after it was all over, I was able to laugh about it with Kiel and everyone else. We all helped to clean the house and everything worked out. I thank Yoda.    

          One of my most memorable stories from my High school days did not involve drinking, lying, or even any of the friends I typically hung out with. It started when a group of my friend's friends and I went on a three day backpacking trip in the Alpine lakes wilderness about an hour and a half drive outside of Seattle. I was the youngest and was tagging along with my slightly older friend Jared and three of his buddies from another High school whom I hadn't met prior to the trip. Cory and Nick were great guys, Neal was not. He was overweight and talked/complained a lot....OK, more than a lot. We couldn't really shut him up because he had just gotten his driver's license hence making the whole trip possible.
          Neal was complaining about lack of breaks, pack pain, and just about everything else before we hit mile marker one. Cory and I ended up marching a head of the rest to avoid Neal's external monologue. We eventually got about four miles in and a few thousand feet up. The rest of the guys showed up and we set up camp on a large flat portion of grass overlooking a beautiful lake. After surveying our food count versus our intake thus far we realized that we messed up and food was going to be scarce. Luckily, one of the freeze dried meals Jared brought said it could feed five on the side of the bag. There happened to be one pot large enough to accommodate it so we were all pretty psyched. The stew took about a half an hour to make. The sun was setting and the scene was five guys frothing at the mouth, taking turns to put their head over the steam to smell it. After each whiff, the 'smeller' would let out a long "mmmmm" as large eyes looked on as if to make sure the verdict of impending deliciousness was still the same. It was Jared's stew so it was up to him to say when it was officially ready to eat. The time for devouring was getting close, I looked over at Neal sitting a little bit behind the rest of us unnaturally quiet and noticed in the dimming light that he was shoving two cold hot dogs down his throat at once.
          "Hey what the hell? Neal's eating hot dogs!", I proclaimed. Everyone turned around and Cory continued,
         "Neal, you didn't disclose that you had hot dogs when we surveyed our food". With his mouth absolutely full he protested,
          "They my haw dogs!"
          "That's fine, more stew for us". Jared interjected.
          "Whatheva, fine, I didn wan your thtew anyway", He bickered as he choked down the last bite. It was almost completely dark at this point and the following event was debated over for the rest of the trip. I'm not sure how it happened because I didn't see it, but I heard it. Apparently Neal chose a precarious path through the camp site on his way to go relieve himself and "accidentally" kicked over the stew, spilling it everywhere. On one hand I can't understand how someone could be so careless and stupid but on the other hand there was no reason for him to do it intentionally. He didn't seem like the vindictive type and the hot dog argument didn't go far enough into the anger zone to warrant aggressive behavior. My stance on the matter was that I believed him that it wasn't intentional, which of course makes him clumsy and stupid. He didn't get chewed out immediately because it had spilled onto a flat rock. After a two second collective groan, we put our ass-beating instincts on hold to slurp up the puddle of stew as best as we could before it had completely mingled with the earth around it. By the time there was no more edible stew left to slurp, the argument started. Neal was eventually ordered by the jury to reveal the rest of his hot dog stash and disperse them amongst us which seemed to satiate our thirst for his blood.
         To sleep, the five of us crammed into two tents. I was in a tent with Jared while Cory, Nick, and Neal slept the other one. I was about to fall asleep when Nick spoke up from the other tent said in a room tone voice,
          "Hey guys can you hear me ok?"
          "Yeah, what's up?" Jared replied.
          "Well, I was just wondering if you guys had heard about what happened out on this trail about a month ago?" I perked up, something had happened? Why was I just being told this now? What was it? He had my full attention. I felt pretty dumb about two minutes into the story when I realized where it was going. I can't remember every detail but I'll do my best. The abridged version went something like this:
           "Well, I read in the paper before we left that about a month ago there was this hiker dude and his girlfriend hiking around here. The weather wasn't as good as it is now and it started to rain so they pitched a tent to wait it out. With nothing else to do they decided to have sex..." A few snickers could be heard from the other tent as well.
          "Hey stop, this really happened -let me finish... So they got naked and started doin' it and lightning struck their tent and burned them both really seriously, the girl died right away actually." The laughter stopped.
          "Once the dude regained consciousness he tried to run for help but when he tried to move he realized his junk was fused to his girlfriend from the lightning.."
          "what the fuu.." Jared whispered.
          "..So he picked her up and started carrying her naked down the hill and tripped down one of the steep parts, hit his head on a rock, and was out cold with his dead girlfriend still attached. When he woke up he puked all over her face at the site of her dead body. Just then a bear came around the corner and started licking up the puke. After he ate it all, he still wasn't satisfied so he began eating her head starting with crunching her skull" The laughter started up again, this time joined by Jared and I as there was no doubt left amongst us to the authenticity of the story.
          "Wait Wait, there's more, guys this really happened", He continued, "..So he shouted real loud and scared the bear away and continued running down the hill. About a mile later he finally found other hikers. It was a group of Catholic school girls on a church outing."
          "Bwaaa ha ha ha" we collectively lost it at this point and I can't remember if the story when on from there but I'm sure if anything, it just got more ridiculous. I don't know if I ever laughed harder. As with all great stories, 90% was the impeccable delivery of the speaker of course. It probably helped that I had just met the guy and didn't have his B.S. figured out yet.
          The next day was pretty fun for most of our daylight hours. We decided to not hike any further in because of our food situation and the fact that the lake we were at needed swimming. There were waterfalls and cliffs to jump from. The weather was in the upper eighties. It couldn't have been a better day until we heard it.
          "Yeaoooowww!" Shrieked Neal from around a bend in the rocks. We rushed over to him at the base of a twelve foot waterfall screaming in pain. We later found out he was attempting to rock climb up it and fell about three feet from the top. I noticed the water around him was turning bright red and got really scared. We rushed down to him and discovered he had a bad injury. A chunk of his flesh was missing from his leg right above his knee about one inch by one inch wide and about a half inch deep. It was bleeding profusely. Nick had a cell phone that didn't work up there but he had a hunch that if he climbed up to a nearby peak it might get service. We consoled Neal and took turns holding pressure on his wound until Nick returned. He came back successful and said that search and rescue was on their way. I guess I didn't know what to expect until I saw the helicopter come over the hill. It felt like we were in a war when the noisy chopper lowered down a basket for us to hoist Neal into. They left as fast as they arrived and there we were, dazed and confused.
          "Well I guess we should go home now" Said Jared.
          "Shit! they left us with his 90 pound back pack!" shouted Nick. We took turns carrying it down the mountain grumbling the entire time about Neal. The whole thing felt like we were in the movie "Stand By Me" only we weren't hunting for a dead body, just trying to have a good time. Besides Jared, I never saw those guys again but I'll always remember them well, especially Neal.