Hilarity Ensued: A night on the town

I want to be able to remember my happiness and youth, long after I have grown past the point of easy recollection. In that vein, I have decided to write down my memories of childhood while they are still relatively recent. This will be part of an ongoing series called "Hilarity Ensued". While many of my childhood memories have a touch of the absurd, and quite a few of them are sublimely hilarious, some are very difficult, and some still elicit that thin line of emotion in the bottom of my eye.

A night on the town

My brother and I were pretty fearless in our youth. We did all kinds of crazy things that would have gotten us into serious trouble, turning poor mom's hair white, had we ever been caught. Sometimes when I look back on our youth, I am utterly amazed that we made it through alive and unharmed.

One of the only sleepovers I can recall from those years was at our friend Joey's house. Joey was mom's best friends son, and one of our only friends. Why we were spending the night and what we did prior to bedtime has left my mind over the years. But as is so often the case with adventurous little boys, the real adventure didn't start until long after we were supposed to be in bed.

It was around eleven thirty when Joey suggested it. We had been laying in bed joking and laughing at farts, when out of nowhere Joey says "You guys wanna go out?" Josh and I, looked from him to each other, and though my eyes said no, Josh's burned with the bright light of oncoming adventure. I knew better than to voice opposition when Josh had so clearly decided already. All I asked was that we not get caught and that we not split up.

Josh and I lived in the heart of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado in the tiny town of Kitteridge, population 700. Joey and his mom, Marge, lived in Denver, or rather in one of the many suburbs on the outskirts of the city. This was our first night sleeping in the city since we were six and seven, and since we were much older (a whopping ten and eleven), we agreed to explore the city streets after midnight.

Marge was still in the living room watching TV when we made up our mind, so while we waited for her to check on us one last time before going to bed. We got dressed and filled our pockets with things that only a child could explain while quietly preparing a plan. Joey suggested a route that would have taken us past a liquor store so we could get some candy. Josh, ever practical and possibly the most diabolical among us, nixed the idea, simply because who wouldn't question three little boys in a store alone after midnight?

Sometime after midnight Joey made the signal and we all laid down and feigned sleep. Through the narrowed slits of my eyes I watched as Marge opened the door, glanced around at all three of us, and then closed the door. I followed her with my ears as she shuffled down the hallway to her bedroom. When her door closed, Joey sat up and said we could leave in about 20 minutes (it took her about 15 to do her evening routine and then fall asleep, the other 5 minutes was just in case).

The three of us, all dressed in the darkest colors we had thought to bring with us, slunk past her bedroom door on the way to the front door. As soon as the door had been shut behind us, we all ran right out into the middle of the street. Joey led the way into the night as we explored the familiar streets at a time of day we had never seen. I stayed close between Joey and Josh so I wouldn't get lost in the night.

We wandered the streets for about an hour without anything eventful or exciting taking place. We had wandered over to a big church that lay at the center of an adjacent neighborhood, and there we sat to rest and decide what to do next. We were obliviously obvious sitting on the main stairwell leading up into the sanctuary, and I wasn't really paying attention to the conversation until they started arguing. When I tuned back in, I realized they were debating a car that was parallel parked halfway up the street that faced the front entrance of the church.

Josh said it looked like a cop car, while Joey held firm that it was just a car with a ski rack. I was about to chime in with my opinion when both of them froze mid-sentence. Someone had come out of the house and gotten into the drivers seat of the car in question. It was dark and impossible to tell if the man was in a uniform or normal clothes. The debate still hung on the air waiting for resolution, when the answer flooded the stairwell on which we were all perched.

The headlights went on and we were all blinded. "Ski rack" said Joey as he shielded his eyes. Then more lights seemed to come on as the side light and revolving red and white light illuminated us. "COPS!" yelled Josh. For one brief moment the three of us were stuck on the stairs. Then the car started to move and the flood light focused directly on us.

"RUN!" screamed Josh, and we did.

Joey was up and around the right side of the church before the word finished leaving Josh's lips, thinking maybe that they couldn't follow all of us, and that I was going to stick with Josh, he said as he ran "meet me at the back door". Josh and I booked around the left side of the building. The cop car decided to follow us.

Somehow I had pulled ahead of Josh in the race to not get caught. And though I heard him yell at me to not stop until I got to Joey's back door, I didn't hear him behind me. When I chanced a glance back over my shoulder I was already a block away from him. I saw him dive down into a stairwell on the side of the church just moments before the cops side light would have found him. I covered my mouth in terror and stopped running.

I was sure that he was caught. I saw where he hid from a block away and I knew the cops had to have seen him too. The cop car slowed to a crawl as the light scoured the side of the building, I guess you couldn't really see the stairs from the car. I slowly sneaked out from my hiding place and slowly wedged myself between two cars. I don't know where the nerve came from, but somehow I found myself standing in the middle of the road. As soon as I knew the cops had seen me and turned their attention away from Josh, I turned and ran.

To avoid immediate capture I ran around the first corner and then ran as fast as I could to get around the next corner. I was just getting to the second corner when the cop car turned onto the street behind me. They saw me and sped up a little bit. But I was too far ahead of them and I had a plan of my own. I turned the second corner and ran into the side yard of the first house on the right. I ran into the back yard, and poised myself just below their waist high chain link fence. I watched as the cops drove by and turned right to follow me. As soon as they turned and moved past their view of the side yard, I hopped over the fence and started running back to where I had been separated from Josh.

Only problem, he wasn't there anymore.

I sat near the spot I had last seen him, crouching in the stairwell in case the cops made a second run. They did, and I hid exactly where he had hid the first time. The cop car stopped in the same spot it had earlier, and the side light was aimed exactly three feet above me in the stairwell. Again, luck held out and they didn't get out of their car to explore. I was not foolish enough to think that I would avoid a third brush, so when they were out of sight again, I moved covertly in the direction that I though Joey lived.

Remember, I was 10. And though I had been to that neighborhood before, it was completely foreign to me that night. I wandered, looking for the familiar. Starting to get really scared and worried that I wouldn't be able to find the house again, I began to cry a bit. Just as the tears began to flow, someone ran into the street two block ahead of me.

Josh.

My tears immediately dried up as I ran to catch up with him. He, the consummate badass, casually strolled in my direction. Routinely checking for cars over his shoulder. We met in the middle of the street, and he looked at me and asked if I was ok, and how I had gotten away. As I was telling him how scared I was, and how the police had almost gotten me twice, we heard leaves rustling off to the right. Looking at the hedge that lined someones back yard we both were startled and relieved to see Joey emerge from the leaves.

We had all had just about enough adventure for one night and started heading back to the house. Since we had all been separated from each other, we took this moment to tell each other what we had just been through. Joey had run around the Church in the other direction and took a shortcut home through some back yards. There he had waited for us for what turned out to be the better part of an hour. When he finally got worried enough he took the same route back to the church, emerging magically out of the hedge of someones back yard.

All I remember about what Josh did was that he separated from me on purpose. Not because he wanted to ditch me, but for the exact same reason I stepped out in the road for the cop car to see me. To distract attention from the other brother. He had gone back to Joey's house to check, but when he saw I wasn't there, he circled the neighborhood, eventually returning to the church where I was looking for him.

We snuck back into the house as softly as we had left it, Joey pausing to listen to his mom snoring through the door. We were safe, and unsuspected. Though Josh and I had many more nights out on the town while the parents slept, this was the first of only two times that Joey joined us. The second... is another story...