My happiest childhood memory.

Now, I was an innocent child, much as I am today. I had this unfaltering trust, which in turn led to the incident of ’01. I was hanging out with my friend Josie. We were over at her house playing some games a little T.V., typical stuff. Mid bowl of chocolate syrup with ice cream Josie presented me with a dilemma of hers. (Note: if you were to talk to her about the following tale, she would say it was my idea; however, this is most surely not the case.) She told me about a clubhouse of hers across the street that she was incidentally locked out of. “Help me find a way to get in,” she had pleaded to me. I accepted the mission and we left the house to further survey the complication.

I recall looking upon a small, squat, grayish building in the middle of an unkempt yard. It was perfect. I needed to get into that fort; it was big enough for the lot of us, yet too small for the grownups to want to dominate, and with a small low-down window that was perfect for spying. Now, to find a way in…

After sufficiently establishing the door was, in fact, locked, we decided we should try to unlock it. The two of us ran back to the house to locate every key in sight. From car keys, to house keys, to diary keys, we had tried them all. It didn’t work.
So onto the next logical step: break in. I told Josie to take off her shoes and I’d take off mine, and we could just chuck them at the window. It was about this time that Josie’s little brother Cody came over to us, importuning to let him help us. And, as older siblings commonly do, we told him no, and to go away. We continued to chuck shoes at the window, soon switching to small rocks, which also didn’t work. After several more minutes of object-chucking, I located a large log-like branch. Hefting it off the ground with Josie’s help, we managed to bash it against the window, shattering it.

Right then, several key events happened. One, I decided I actually had no desire to break the window and quickly fled the scene. Two, Josie realized that this actually was not her clubhouse and she shouldn’t break into it, and also left. Third, upon stumbling upon the scene, Cody (who decided if we got to break a window, so should he) broke two more of the shed’s windows with a hammer. Finally, and probably most importantly, the neighbor who had witnessed the entire episode called the police and reported an armed break in.

I can now vividly recall being 8 years old playing with sidewalk chalk next to the garage and being swarmed by 4 cop cars (including my father, who was chief-of-police then). This prompted me to hide within the house, put on my most angelic face, and wait for the punishments to come.

Yes, I was punished; groundings, lectures, community service, extra chores. Yet… it’s still one of my most cherished memories. Why? Because it’s one of those memories, the ones that stick with you to the end, and whether good or bad, it’ll always remind you of what an idiot you used to be.