Good ol' days

Louie and I were in the bed last night, forever trying to catch up on sleep, we had gone relatively early at 10:20pm. Sometimes when I go to bed early im not quite ready to fall asleep so random thoughts pop into my head of the weirdest things and last night was one of them.

When I was in tenth grade (almost 10 years ago, yikes!) myself and two of my friends would always get off the bus after school and go to the Video store across the street appropriately named ‘Video Ezy’. We would go in there and walk around, talk to the staff, play games, whatever. It was great. We had a fun time just hanging out ‘shootin the shit’.

While waiting for the bus on a hot afternoon at school we had come up with a devilish plan to embezzle some pornographic videos for our very own viewing. While on the bus we had drawn up a plan of attack that was fool proof. We would go in, take off the security tags, place them in someone’s backpack and do away with the videos without anyone seeing. I said it was fool proof!

Somehow Cameron was chosen as the designated video carrier. Looking back, there was no more difficult job or function of the plan that was more important then his and he possessed the most risk of any of us because he was the one who would ultimately be carrying out the stolen goods.

Maybe that’s why he agreed to be the lead in the bungled heist. He was to be the messiah who brought us hours of pleasure and we would be forever indebted to him. Sounded good to him, all he had to do was walk out of the store.

Once we were in the store we had made eye contact and agreed today would be the day. With a slight nod and a quick shuffle to the back of the store we were quickly undressing the videos of any tags, markings or such that would make the beepers go off.

After stuffing the videos into Cameron’s bag, Dj and I walked first through the security detectors as though this would secure his escape unharmed. As the two of us walked out through the electric opening doors we heard a piercing alarm. Cameron had made it half way through the detectors and somehow, somewhere a tag had gone unseen on one of the videos.

From that point on things seemed to go in slow motion. Dj and I both looked back to see Cameron looking at us with a pained look on his face of confusion and fear. His shoulders were shrugged up, his hands in the air as if to say ‘what happened? Our plan was fool proof!’. He probably weighed his options for about 2 seconds and im sure today he would agree that his decision thereafter was not the best ‘clutch’ decision he has ever made.

To the two villains who had miraculously escaped unharmed, Dj and I then saw Cameron running past, looking at us with a backpack full of illegal merchandise screaming ‘what do I do? What do I do? I’m screwed!! Oh my god, I am in SO MUCH trouble!!’

The manager of the store knew Dj pretty well so she quickly asked Dave to ‘Chase that boy, he’s stealing something!’ so Dj, caught between acting like he played no part in the act and not wanting to citizens arrest a friend did the thing that any friend would do, he ran up to Cameron and said ‘You have gone too far now, you have to keep running and act like I tried to catch you’.

So Cameron run all the way home. The manager had already called Cameron’s mother once he had made it home. It turns out the manager had called the school and through a process of elimination had pinned him for the hit. He was busted, served a good portion of his summer cleaning up the store and its surrounding gardens without neither Dj nor I ever being accessories to the crime. Thank you Cameron!

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This story took me a good twenty minutes to tell Louie because I was laughing so hard I couldn’t contain myself. Its great to be able to look back at your younger years and laugh so hard you are in fits. It truly was an instance where the cliché ‘the good ‘ol days’ held its weight.