About two weeks later I was kidnapped! My sister took me out of the crib when I was little and put me under it so that she could see just how close she could come to having mama institutionalized when she couldn't find me. After that it was third degree sunburns and that deathly under tow at Carolina Beach, dog bites, multiple bee stings, mud to my armpits, and stitches in my knees and heal from where my sister PUSHED me down the stairs! She tells a different story. Ignore her if she ever brings it up. At fifteen I'd sneak mama's station wagon keys up to my bedroom and wait for them to go to sleep. When the window panes rattled I knew they were snoring up a storm and I could stick dynamite under their beds and they'd barely roll over. Down the front porch rails I'd go carefully putting my foot in the deepest curve of the "S" shape pattern. I'll never know why I didn't fall and break my neck. I guess it was my purpose on this earth to test the patience of my parents and I just wasn't anywhere near being finished with my job! I was cool in that wood grain station wagon cruising up to Raider Deck with no drivers license, hardly any gas at all (daddy likes to see how far he can push a tank of gas...always has) and not one brain in my body! I'd pull up in that bus of a ride, park it with the rest of the cars out there and walk in like I owned the place. I'd leave when I wanted to and if my friends needed a ride and were near by I'd go get them too all with the fumes daddy left for me!
Then there was the time I jumped off Ledbetter bridge. I thought that was so cool that I went home and told daddy....a week after the fact! I didn't bother to tell him that I did it when we were skipping school and I sure didn't tell him that we skipped school in a friends car and that none of us in the car had even the first sign of a VALID drivers license (I now see a pattern after all these years...do you??) So after the devil flew all into daddy and he proceeded to give me that glare that makes you go potty on yourself he and I went back out to the bridge! Imagine this trip. I'm sitting on the passenger side praying that we'll get four flat tires and daddy will have something else to be mad at besides me. My fingers are crossed, my legs are crossed everything I can cross is crossed wishing for luck! We get there...daddy pulls over...he makes me get out...I'm expecting him to tie cinder blocks to my ankles and throw me over but instead he says..."Look!"..and points at the water. It's summer and there's been a draught and the water level is lower so all over the place are stumps that look like sharpened pencils! Seriously, if you didn't know better you'd swear that someone got out there with a giant pencil sharpener and got those stumps to the finest point you can imagine! "When do you think you'll be jumping again Rita?" Of course I couldn't answer him, I was too busy looking in the back of that same station wagon I stole on the weekends for two cinder blocks and some rope! I didn't know what to do and my voice box was for sure on strike so I just shrugged my shoulders! Ooooh. Wrong answer! I don't remember everything daddy said but let me put it this way. There was some mention of having my IQ tested as well as increasing some life insurance policy and I heard something about putting me on the bus with Rusty. I was also put on restriction till I was fifty. Of course when I heard that I thought..."you've got to sleep sometime" and immediately thought..."It's a good thing my voice box ain't working or that would've came right out!"
From that it was sneaking cigarettes. Me and a friend of mine would get us some of Mama's Silva Thins, matches, an ash tray and of course the car keys and head upstairs to go to bed early because we were "tired". Actually we went to bed so we could get up later in the night and listen out for the sonic snoring indicating it was cool to exit the premises via the roof/porch rail!
My friend's a chicken so she scooted her way across the roof dragging every crumb of the shingles face off into her skin and clothes. I've got half my body off the roof feeling around for the railing with my foot when she says..."I can't do this, I'm scared I'll fall". "Yes you can just come on hurry up!"
"I can't do it!"
" I can't do it!"
"CAN'T!"
"CAN'T!"
Ok, now the chicken is yelling to the top of her lungs and she's almost directly over mama and daddys room! This is great! "Ssssshhhhh! Ssssshhhh! Shut up! Shut up!"...foot still looking for the railing....on go the next door neighbors lights! Both of us freeze and FINALLY she shuts that chicken mouth of hers! I inch my way back to her like a spy so no one sees me and then I realize it..... Oh yesss...the neighbors are drunk AND they're fighting! Now THAT'S entertainment! So we sit on the roof like it's a front row seat to some huge boxing event, smoke our stolen cigarettes and mock the neighbors. This one was going to be a good one....a good long one. "Hmmmm" my friend says..."didn't I see some beer in your refrigerator?"
I sat on the peak of the roof while the chicken sat holding on to the storm window we climbed out of with one hand and a Natural Light with the other. The next time I saw her was when we had HER mama's stolen cigarettes (we kinda took turns stealing cigs so the guilt was split...that's what friends do right?) in my bedroom smoking them as if our intent was to single handedly pollute the world. We hear my mama just as she rounds the top stair and shove burning cigarettes in my night stand drawer. I remember thinking..."Just get me out of this one without the fire department having to be called in and that's it for me and the chicken! I told her to go out on the roof!"
When I'm ready to rip out every strand of Pete's hair because she's so...so??? so teenagerish I force myself to stop and think...well has she ever jumped into a bed of sharpened pencils? Has she driven all over the place without a license? How about sneaked out on the roof for a puff off a stolen cigarette? No, she hasn't done any of those.* I wonder though if she'd do a little better at being more well behaved if she felt the threat of cinder blocks?
*disclaimer: Pete's not done these things AS FAR AS I know.
