Wild Thing

I was a wild thing as a teenager, not the drinking, smoking, doing drugs kind of wild thing. I just like to have fun and often got into mischief. I had no curfew because my parents knew I would come home when my friends went home and that was usually around 10pm.

Before my friends and I could drive we walked where we wanted to go, sometimes we rode our bikes or found older friends to drive us, but mostly we walked or ran depending on the situation. In ninth grade we liked to toilet paper boys houses. Each of us would bring a pillowcase of toilet paper and off we’d go to wrap some boys house. We often cut through fruit orchards and fields as short cuts or just to stay away from the streets and avoid getting caught.

One night when we were out on bicycles we were crossing an intersection and got hit by a car full of boys we knew. We thought the boys had seen us, my friend was relaxed and laughing when she got hit. When I realized they weren’t stopping I tensed up and hit my brakes flying over the handle bars and hitting the pavement hard. I was pretty banged up and my bike was damaged. My friend rolled up on the hood of the car and wasn’t hurt at all.

When I was a 10th grader I got a car. My grandfather’s 1961 Mercury Comet. My father paid $125 for it. I called it the gutless wonder. It had no pickup and Bountiful, Utah had hills, lots of them. My car crawled up the hills. Oh, how having a car made life so much more fun, even if it was a gutless wonder. The summer after my sophomore year was deemed the summer of Suzie Cream Cheese. My friend Suzie and I got into all kinds of mischief. We decided one summer night that we wanted to throw some water balloons. We filled a box with water balloons and drove around Bountiful and threw them at our friends. One group of boys decided that they were going to get us. Without thinking, I started up a very hilly street on my getaway. Soon they had surrounded me with their cars and motorcycles and then they slowed down. One of them jumped out of the car and opened my hood and pulled an essential wire out before driving off. Without the ability to start my car the only thing we could do is to push until we could turn around and head downhill. As we were coasting the boys came back and threw it out of their car. I got out reinstalled it and we were off.

One night we decided to sleep on the football field. It was a great idea until we actually got there and realized how scary it would be for the two of us to sleep on the field. We loaded up our sleeping bags and went to my house and slept in the back yard. Other times we would turn the lights on the football field and just play frisbee or run around. Everyone knew where the switch was and we knew about how long it would take before the principal would see the lights from his house and come to make us turn them off.

There was quite a rivalry between the two high schools in our town and damage was done to both schools. I never participated in anything that caused property damage. Someone from the rival school came to our school and spray painted “Viewmont Vikings” on the back of the school.

The week before the big football game we got the idea to spray paint school spirit sayings on the circular drive that was in front of our school. We talked to Mr. Perkins our principal about it and we thought he liked the idea. We took that as permission. Several of us went to the store and each of us bought spray paint in school colors. This was on a Thursday night right before the game. We drove up to the school and started painting. There were two seniors from the basketball team at the school watching us. We hadn’t been there too long when we saw the flashing lights of a police car coming up the drive. We tried to get our football player friends to help us flee in their car. The said they wouldn’t run from the police. When the police talked to us and looked at our student IDs he called our principal and we had to wait for him to come to the school. He got there quickly because he lived just two houses down the street across from the school. We realized that he was disappointed in us. We were school leaders, cheerleaders and part of the Pep Club. He punished us by not talking to us for a few days. Finally, he broke the silence by telling us that we were a bunch of hot dogs! PS The basketball players did not call the police, we found out later that it was girl from our class who thought we were from Viewmont.

This post has gotten really long. I did a lot of crazy things as a teenager! There are more stories to tell.