There was a family who's son I mentioned peeing on a another kids
head. Well, they moved across town and were now Justin's neighbors
and we hated them. They had a daughter older than us whom we ignored
completely. They had a son one year older than us who we fought at
every opportunity. This included throwing rocks at each other on the
way back from school, regular trampoline wrestling, and sometimes
fistfights. In the strange calculus of the relationships of young
boys just because you fought with someone all the time did not mean
you did not like them it was just how it worked out. They had a
daughter a year younger than us that we hated, loathed, despised and
wished hateful things upon. I really cannot remember what was so
odious about that girl but she inspired a boiling rage that could
only be cooled by antagonizing her and her family. One day in the
late fall, around thanksgiving, I was sleeping over at Justin's house
and we worked out a plan with Ryan to play a prank. It was below
freezing so we thought a really funny joke would be to take a hose
put it against their door and turn it on just enough to keep water
flowing over their front door all night. The plan was executed and
when we looked across the street in the morning it was beautiful
there was a massive ice sculpture freezing the door shut and covering
the entire porch and stems in a icy frosting of pranksters delight.
The dad was out front trying to break it up with a hatchet and it
looked like he might be really mad. While he chopped we knelt
backwards on the couch looking out the window when all of the sudden
he dropped his tool and started walking across the street. Our hearts
dropped because we thought he was coming to tell and then there would
be retribution swift and sure. We scrambled off the couch and went
and hid in Ryan's room and waited. He knocked on the door and
Justin's mom answered and talked to him for a second and then he
left. We gave it a second and then moseyed out to see what the story
was. We asked casually what the neighbor was up to and she said he
was just asking if he could borrow something to get the ice off of
his front porch because one of his kids had left a hose on. We were
at once relived that our certain doom had been averted but we were
also deeply saddened. There is nothing worse than for a prank to be
misunderstood as a simple case of negligence or an accident instead of the brilliant plan that it was. Well, I guess it beats certain death.
