This story makes me seem like a bad person, and as such, I shall tell it. To avoid incriminating my "friends" (really my accomplices), I'll use fake names.
During the 2003 district convention, I was an attendant. Its was the first time I'd been an attendant, and I was taking it very seriously. I helped quite a few handicatpped people out, I brought a flashlight with me every day, and I completely missed the majority of the program. That seems to be the running theme whenever I'm an attendant, because I end up working through the convention. The weirdest thing, or maybe the coolest, is that whenever the doors opened each day, the people would come running in, as if, as I joked one morning, Jesus had announced his appearance and promised free "I Saw Jesus. . .And All I Got Was This Lousy Healing" T-shirts to the first ten people to find him. Like I said, this is incriminating stuff.
There was this one lady in particular, who came up every morning with a walker, about the same time as the early morning workers got there. She would always ask for a chair, since her handicap kept her from standing for two hours. However, as soon as we opened the doors to let her in, she picked her walker up and ran, yes ran. I should precursor this by saying, this wasn't a small sister. She was lineman size. If she'd fallen, we'd need heavy machinery to lift her. But she would grab her walker and RUN inside, so she could get her seats. I remember her telling this one young sister, "Get behind me and keep up, because I always get my seats!"
Anyway, the convention draws to a close and I run into my good friend, "RocketBoy". RocketBoy is a bit, um. . .lets say eccentric, and he starts telling me about this plan to go to "TheOtherVille", to go and wreak havoc on somebody else's lives mind you in revenge. The victims where going to be "Bamboo" and "Catcher". Apparently, Bamboo and Catcher had come to RocketBoy's house while he was out of town, (which happens pretty frequently, he doesn't spend a lot of time here in Huntsville) and they, with the help of "JugHead", trashed his house. They took RocketBoy's socks put them in the toilet and taped them in with duct tape and his shower curtain. Ties were on top of a highly unreachable fan, and well, they basically did a number on his house. It took him a while to clean it, and the whole time, Rocketboy planned his revenge.
After hearing that much of the story, I decided I wanted to be down with this revenge. My reason? I went to visit their congregation and they didn't talk to me. So now, I despise everything they stand for. And I'm willing to exact revenge on them for no better reason than that. Told you that this would make me seem like a bad person. Also in for the revenge was my good friends, "Juice" and "Cheesecake". So having helped clean up a bit, we took off.
Juice and RocketBoy had extra clothes with them, since they had technically planned ahead, and I'm not sure what Cheesecake's excuse was, but anyway, when I get in the car, there's an old briefcase and a ton of newspaper in the back seat, and Cheesecake and I start spelling out a ransom note inside the briefcase. To keep other people from being indemnified (unless they want to incriminate themselves) I won't go into too many details. But the briefcase had pictures of people in the newspaper in it, and we had letters taped inside, it was a work of art, and Cheesecake deserves full credit for that.
We stopped somewhere to grab food and after RocketBoy's car didn't start, (good job Chevy!) and we talked to tech support in Canada and in these here United States, we decided that Canada was cooler than the U.S., (an ongoing theme) and we finally got the car started and headed to ThatOtherVille. We get there after two hours of driving, and we start at the house. First we have to get in. I begin trying to work the credit card option, and RocketBoy goes around the side of the house with Juice. They get in through an open window. I destroy every card in my wallet except for my license. Thank God I didn't bring my major credit card. Either way, we get in. And that's when the badness starts.
I start off by just walking around the house and checking out the various rooms, and I am insanely impressed with Catcher and Bamboo's living quarters. They have really cool, well decorated, well kept rooms. Then I begin to feel bad. Because here I was, to destroy all that they stood for, and why? Because they didn't speak to me? To try to quell my raging conscience, I begin to remove lightbulbs from all the lights. Rocketboy disappeared outside, and Juice begin rifling through their drawers. Cheesecake was walking around, making many hilarious jokes, and rifling through their bathroom. After I got all the lightbulbs, I began playing with their clocks, setting them to wrong times, completely wrong random times,when I noticed their teddy bears. They were pretty cute. Somehow, they found their way to the oven, and then inside the oven. It wasn't me, I swear. I walk back out front after fooling with their clocks, and I see Juice with a handful of panties and a maniacal look on his face. He gets a bowl of water and is stuffing the panties into the water. That's right, its headed to the freezer. Oh, they're going to want to kill us for this. And they really don't deserve it. . .my conscience starts plaguing me again. They're just sweet, Christian, pioneer sisters, and we're trashing their house. We're terrible people. I said as much to RocketBoy when he came back in with a branch from the outside tree. As he set it up to look like a Christmas tree, he explained to me that they trashed his house.
Interestingly enough, up until that point, I'd converted Cheesecake to my side, but when RocketBoy reminded us of his house, I was alone in my morality, and so I continued helping trash the house. RocketBoy told us to hurry up and grab one of all their shoes, as he and Juice begin rifling through their closet and loading up boxes with their clothes. I can't rememeber, and honestly I didn't realize until later, what all we took, but it was sorted into tops and bottoms. Something got left behind, I don't remember what. We took some with us, and also one of every shoe, as well as all the lightbulbs. The rest we taped closed, and then taped it to the floor, and put tape over the doorways (that was all my doing. Curse the fool who gave me the tape). But where was Cheesecake during all of this? I walked around looking for him, and then I saw the bathroom.
Oh my lord. The house had this really really really nice tile countertop in the bathroom. The tile from the floor had been carried up to the sink, and considering that it wasn't just Formica like it normally is, this was hilariously scary. Cheesecake had taken muscle cream and put a dot square in the center of every tile. Amazing. I then here RocketBoy command Juice, and Juice comes around the corner with a huge knife. Had I been drinking, I'dve been worried. But Juice attacks the shower curtain, and he massacres the said shower curtain with his knife. Things got weird then.
We started loading the car, and RocketBoy sees a car coming up the road. Its getting dark at this point, and when we see the car, RocketBoy says, "I think that's the cops." I haven't had good experiences with cops (that story is forthcoming) and so I run back into the house, literally saying, "Get down, get down, if you don't we could all go to jail!" See what a guilty conscience and a horrible experience with several cops can do for and to you?
RocketBoy asks for my flashlight, can't remember why, but we finished loading up and we leave. The house is completely tricked, and there was even Christmas lights on a car parked out front. I won't recount all of the things done, but only because, well, because I don't want to brag about such a thing. So as we are driving off, laughing smugly, I suddenly remember: my flashlight!
"Where's my flashlight?" Last time seeing, I remember, it was on the table. Guess what. . .it still is. Back at the house. Its a casualty. Thanks RocketBoy. I wouldn't mention this normally, but you see, my flashlight has my name on it. And its obviously my name. I got an email later with a picture of it in Bamboo's grasp with a promise of its return if I gave away addresses of all responsible. Of course, I didn't. But I do miss that flashlight. It was my first purchase with money that I'd worked for. But that's not all. The rest of my criminal associates made fun of me the entire night for forgetting the flashlight, and for being a little sniveling whiny boy. Fine. I've got a conscience, maybe I shouldn't have come.
So we stop for pizza, and after eating the worse pizza ever we took pictures of us in various victorious poses. Why you say? Because inside the ransom briefcase (which I forgot to lock, which defeated the initial plan of them having to guess what the last two numbers of the combination were) was, of course in newspaper type, an address to a website. Which we made. Which had pictures of our exploits inside their house. Yeah. We're bad people. Did I forget to mention, we took pictures with their camera as well, which whenever they develop the film, will forever remind them of the fact we trashed their house.
My victorious pose?
Should I feel bad for what I did? Now, several years later, I really don't feel so bad, but back then, I was torn apart during the whole thing. Did I ever see my flashlight again? Like you have to ask.
