Random Memory Theater, Part 1: The "Runnig" Men

I sat in the passenger seat of the truck, with early spring moonlight shining through the windows. It was nearing midnight. Across the road from where I waited, and on the other side of a dense field clogged with foliage, Wayne was somewhere in the shadows of the campus grounds, doing the crime. I was lookout. And I was on edge, because I knew this was taking too long.

That’s when I saw the police car slowly rolling up the road.

I can’t say for certain whose idea it was, because this all happened over two decades ago, but I’m sure it must have been mine. It just sounds like something I would have come up with back then, back during our senior year at Sacramento Union Academy, a (very) small Seventh-day Adventist school in the Sacramento suburb of Carmichael. It wasn’t just a high school. The campus was broken up into three distinct parts – there were your elementary school buildings (K-6), your junior high building (7-8, which is why they only got one building, I guess), and the high school area (9-12). If you had Adventist parents who wanted you to have the right church school education, and could afford the tuition, you could, conceivably, spend your entire pre-college education, from kindergarten through high school graduation, at the same street address. And more than a few alums of S.U.A. did just that.

Me, I didn’t quite make the whole ride, but I did start there in the 5^th grade. Wayne started there in the 7^th grade, where we met, but we really didn’t become friends until the 8^th grade, and when we did, we became best friends, and stayed that way all though school. We had other friends in our circle, but the main musketeers were me, Wayne and Tim (Tim, who had been my best friend since the 6^th grade. We had met in 5^th grade, but it appears it takes people about a year to decide if they like me or not…).

We started off pretty nerdy. Comic books, role-playing games, Star Wars movies, Atari games…all those things that pretty much guarantee you an entertaining but dateless high school existence. The good news was that we were in a small enough school that there was a lot of crossover between social cliques, so we never really felt, or were treated, like outcasts. We just understood that we weren’t really all that cool. Or, maybe I’m the only one who realized that. I don’t know. Denial’s a very powerful coping mechanism.

But something odd happened about halfway through our senior year. I’m still not quite sure how it happened, but I think, again, the small-school factor had something to do with it. However it happened, an unexpected social evolution took place. All of a sudden, we were cool. Nature does abhor a vacuum, and being seniors, we were suddenly all that was left after the people cooler than us all went on to college. Guess we somehow had to fill that void in the social norm. No longer comic-reading, role-playing, Star-Wars-novel-obsessing dweebs (at least not publicly…), we were now hard-partying, midnight-movie-going, socially sought-out dudes. Inexplicably, we were part of the in-crowd. Even stranger, we were part of the inner circle. People were coming up to us on Friday to find out what the big plans were for the weekend, the ones that all the rumors would inevitably be flying around campus about the following Monday.

Wayne lived in Woodland, which is a good 45-minute drive from campus, so it wasn’t unusual for him to crash at my place on the weekends. I lived just a couple of blocks from school, and had one of those cool moms who didn’t have curfews or ask too many questions. So with that set-up, our weekends were pretty free. While most of them were filled with parties at this-girl’s house or movies down at the $1.50 theater (which always seemed to involve lots of wine coolers stuffed into our trench coats (trench coats were the thing back in ’86, so you wouldn’t get a second glance from the crack movie theater security, even if it wasn’t cold out)), sometimes people actually did have to stay home and study. Not US, but other people. So occasionally there was free time available for really bad ideas.

There was a small courtyard between some of the few buildings of the high school part of the campus. On one side of it was a brick wall. Tradition had turned this into “the senior wall”. Each year, the soon-to-graduate class got to get some paint and decorate it up – in staff-approved ways, of course. The previous year’s class would have their decorations remain up for most of the following year, but in the spring, the new seniors got to claim it as their own.

This one particular weekend, we knew that the painting time was coming, and that the wall would first be painted over before our class got to get our hands on it. This over-painting would happen on Tuesday. And the following week, our class would begin our memorial. Somewhere either before or during that pre-paint weekend, the idea came into being. The wall was going to be painted over anyway, right? So if someone were to, say, sneak onto the school grounds in the dead of night and do their OWN painting, it wouldn’t technically be vandalism, would it? In the literal interpretation, yes, it would be, but since the wall was already about to be painted over, it’s not like it would cost the school any money that wasn’t already being spent. And if this pre-painting was something cool, not something vulgar or offensive, who would really be hurt by it? It was a victimless crime, and one that would make the mysterious rebels who perpetuated it quite legendary. As a couple of guys getting close to leaving high school, and that campus, behind forever, legendary was exactly the thing we wanted to walk out as.

The do-no-harm nature of the idea is what convinces me that idea was mine. I was too nice a kid (drinking and smoking aside) to want to be part of any REAL criminal act, but this was a way to let us have the criminal experience without actually doing anything REALLY bad. Denial, again, is a wonderful thing. We could commit a crime and still feel like we hadn’t (and if we were caught, use this as our defense). Wayne, the most risk-taking of the two of us, was, of course, all for it. We latched onto this idea, and it didn’t take much discussion to turn it into a real plan.

As for what we’d be spray-painting on the wall? That, too, was my idea (this part I do remember). At that time, the first “Nightmare On Elm Street” film was all the rage at the midnight movies. I don’t know how it did in the regular box office when it first came out, but it had become a cult obsession for the midnight crowd, and we saw it often (along with “Re-Animator” and “Heavy Metal”). Everyone around school (the cool “everyone”, the ones whose parents even let them go to movies and could stay out late enough to hit the midnights) knew it and quoted Freddy Krueger often. One of his big lines, spoken to the film’s hunted heroine, Tina (played by an actress who went on to play a frontier ho that had a roll in the hay with Kevin Costner in “Silverado”), was “No running in the hallways!” This seemed the perfect slogan to splash up on a wall that was right by our high school hallways.

The plan was simple. Wayne was staying at my place that weekend. We would leave my house, late at night, taking his father’s truck that he used to get to school from Woodland each day. There was a small road next to the campus with no lights on it, one next to the tangled field that took up a good chunk of the school grounds’ unused property. This was the perfect staging point. The incursion would take place across that field, allowing the infiltrator to sneak in, unseen, and gain access to the dark, deserted campus. The courtyard was outdoors, so locked doors would not be a problem. Wayne would do the deed. Though I was, at that time, only using a wheelchair part of the time, the Muscular Dystrophy still meant that me traipsing across a field wasn’t very realistic. I would wait in the truck and keep watch. Wayne would creep in, paint the wall, and sneak back, and we’d drive quickly back to my place. And then, come Monday, the oh-so-clever vandalism (and early viral movie marketing) would be seen by everyone arriving to school, students and faculty alike, before anyone could have time to cover it up. No one would know who did it. But we would know, and bask in the enigmatic anonymity that would make us legends at the Academy for decades to come.

So Saturday night came, and we snuck out of my place and drove to the road by the school. We parked there, next to the vegetable stand that sold produce by day, and looked around. All looked clear. We were just off Winding Way, a fairly busy road in Carmichael, but the late hour kept traffic to a minimum.

Wayne was dressed for the job. Overdressed, more like it. A martial-arts obsession (we really liked our Saturday afternoon kung-fu theater on a local UHF station) had led Wayne, that year, to go to a martial arts store and buy himself a ninja “ghi” – that black, hooded outfit that true ninjas wear (apparently, true ninjas also shop at strip malls). So he was garbed all in black for maximum stealth, and armed with a can of drug-store-bought red spray paint. His part of the mission was simple – make it to the wall, take out the can, spray “No running in the hallways” there, and sign it with the name “Freddy”. Mine was to stay in the truck and keep an eye out for “the man”.

Wayne left the truck and headed across the field, and I quickly lost sight of him in the darkness (like you do with ninjas). I was left alone, sitting there in the passenger seat, looking all around as the sound of crickets serenaded me and the wind through the nearby trees kept my nerves on edge. I’d tense up with the sound of each approaching car on Winding Way, and watch it over my shoulder. It would pass, and I’d let my breath out. I wasn’t used to this life of crime, and was getting my cherry busted. I wondered if this was what all felons went through on their first big job?

Time passed, and I got more nervous. I tried to calculate how long each step of the process would take him, and it seemed that he was overdue. Of course, I was the one sitting in the dark, counting the seconds, so of course time was passing slower for me. I was on guard time. He was on ninja time. I kept looking around, keeping my stakeout senses sharp, and turned to watch another vehicle cruise through the night down Winding.

I turned back around, and I saw the headlights.

Down the single-lane paved road I was parked next to, in the darkness, a pair of headlights had suddenly appeared, like luminous, knowing eyes. From watching them, I could tell the car they were attached to was moving very slowly…and coming right toward me.

I was frozen for a moment. Who would be driving on that road, at that time of night, and moving along at such a purposefully slow speed?

The answer was obvious, and gripped and fondled my heart like icy fingers.

Cops.

Of all the luck. What were the chances? We just happen to decide to do this thing (which all of a sudden didn’t seem so brilliant after all), show up here for a small window of time, and a cop car just happens to be cruising that lonely road? I had never been a criminal until that night, and only then discovered that I was one of those criminals with the terrible luck. The ones who get back to the get-away car and realize they dropped their keys in the bank, or that pick up the hooker with the badge hidden under her tube top, or get pulled over for an expired registration when they have three Hefty bags filled with weed in the trunk.

The lights kept, slowly and ominously, coming, and with the road as narrow as it was, the car’s path was going to bring it just inches from the truck’s driver’s side as it went by. And there I would be sitting, on the passenger side, alone and white-faced with fear, in the middle of the night on a quiet road parked next to a stand that peddled cumquats. Hmmm, I wonder where the obviously-missing driver could be? And could I please step out of the car and show some I.D.?

Just ducking was a thought, but not a good one, as they had probably already seen me. My mind and pulse raced, and I came up with the only solution that seemed plausible. I quickly slid over behind the wheel and got my hand on the ignition key. Never mind the fact that I didn’t have a license and had, in fact, never driven before. I would start it up and drive away, try my best to look natural and normal, and circle around Carmichael for a while until the coast was clear and I could come back and find Wayne…assuming he hadn’t gotten back and found the truck gone and started walking back to my place (in a ninja outfit. Probably not the best plan). And assuming the cops wouldn’t shine the light on me anyway, suspiciously parked as I was, and ask me to produce my driver’s license. License? I didn’t even have a California I.D. All I had to prove my identity was my school I.D. card. But that’s okay. I’m sure the cops would run a quick trace on the truck’s plate and find out it was registered to Wayne’s dad.

We were screwed.

I readied myself to start the engine, but couldn’t quite make myself do it yet. Driving sure seems like a simple thing to do, until you actually have to do it for the very first time. Could I even get the damned thing into gear? And would I be weaving all over the road, trying to get a feel for the over-sized truck, and red-flag myself THAT way and end up being pulled over for DUI instead?

The moment of truth came. The car came up next to the truck, its driver’s window to my driver’s window (though was it really “my” driver’s window if I couldn’t actually drive?). I was frozen, and waiting for whatever came, and starting to put pressure on the key in the ignition. I tried not to make direct eye-contact, fearing that the truth in my eyes would give away everything.

It didn’t stop. It kept slowly rolling by. And as I braved a glance to my left, I saw the tail end of it before it disappeared.

Just some Buick.

Or what I assume was a Buick. As I didn’t have to worry about driving one, it’s not like I knew a whole lot about cars back then, anyway.

It put its blinker on and came to a full stop (even though there were no cars anywhere else in sight, save the truck I was manning), and made a slow right turn onto Winding and disappeared into the Carmichael night. I was able to breathe again, and gratefully took my tensed fingers off the key. Not a cop, as I’d assumed. Probably, from the driving speed, some old couple (Carmichael has lots of old couples in it, for some reason). Why the old folks were up so late, I had no idea, but their little jaunt had given me a hell of a scare…and almost my first driving lesson.

Soon, Wayne, the tardy ninja, appeared from the brush and got back into the truck, and I related my nerve-wracking tale of near disaster as we drove back home (because breaking into a high school really isn’t the risky and brave part of the job…sitting on your ass in the car is). We got home without further incident, knowing that the deed was done. We had really pulled it off. All we had to do now was wait for Monday to enjoy the fruits of our daring caper.

Monday morning came, and we arrived at school. As we walked (well, I rolled) though the main hallway, I could already sense the excitement of “something” having happened, and catch snatches of talk about it. Doing my best to keep my grin to myself, I casually headed to the courtyard to check out the realization of my ingenious scheme, and the thing no one would be able to stop talking about for the rest of the day. Or the rest of the school year. And on into eternity. Immortality was mine.

And sure enough, there it was, all sprayed in red on the senior wall, with a number of fellow students gathered around and looking it.

There were my chosen words.

No runnig in the hallways.

Wait…

No “runnig”?

What the $*#% was a “runnig”?!

Apparently, in his rush to finish the job and get out (it’s POSSIBLE that he might have been even more nervous than me, actually being the one spray-painting a wall at his high school and possibly setting himself up to get kicked out of that school and maybe even end up in jail), Wayne seemed to have forgotten a letter. I don’t know, maybe his ninja hood was down over his eyes and he didn’t notice. Regardless, our big, hip, unforgettable gesture had itself a typo. It’s something of a let-down when you realize you’ve been immortalized, but immortalized as a bad speller.

And as if this wasn’t enough, there was also the signature. I had told him to write “no running in the hallways”, and that it should be signed “Freddy”. Well, he got the “Freddy” part right. But he felt the need to put the word “signed” above it. So the whole thing actually read:

No runnig in the hallways.

Signed,
Freddy.

Vandals in need of an editor. I just shook my head.

But, typos and the need for a Strunk and White aside, we had done it, and that was the important thing. And everyone, sure enough, was talking about it. Not much in the way of excitement goes down in small Adventist high schools. There are no shootings or stabbings. Rarely does anyone get pregnant. Fights are, at best, shoving matches that last about ten seconds. So, as we figured, something like that got everyone charged up and grateful to have a little scandal introduced into an otherwise boring Monday.

I left the wall and headed toward my first class, and heard some girls talking about it. Ah. I’d been part of something the GIRLS were talking about. That jumped the payoff up a nice few notches. Didn’t matter that they didn’t know it was me. I knew. And I knew they didn’t know that I knew that they didn’t know. And they knew… Well, somewhere in there, it was cool and manly thing. I think.

I spotted our pal Chris come walking up. Chris was one of our main crew, and one of our main buds. He, himself, was a monster Freddy Krueger fan, having seen it with us many times, and was very verbal, at school, about his love for it. Chris did not, however, know that we had perpetrated this Freddy-themed crime, as Wayne and I had sworn a ninja oath to keep it between ourselves.

As he approached, one of the girls looked back and spotted him.

“Chris,” she laughed. “What did you do that?”

Huh?

And then all the girls were talking to Chris, and laughing. Why? Because everyone, it turns out, assumed Chris had done it. Chris insisted, in a voice that suggested it wasn’t the first time he’d had to make the denial that morning, that he DIDN’T do it. He was adamant about this and very confused, but he didn’t seem to be troubled by the accusation all THAT much. After all, everyone seemed to be treating him like a hero for it.

You’d kind of have to know Chris to properly understand this. You ever know someone, in your life, that seems to be able to get away with ANYTHING? This has always been true of Chris, and not due to any conscious effort on his part. Chris is a great and fun and personable guy, the kind of person everyone gets along with and wants to be around. And he would, from time to time, do something not too smart, as most of us did at that age. However, he would always manage to get free from it without repercussions, or with very few. He could get away with things because, frankly, he was never TRYING to get away with anything. He would just fall into a mess (one that usually had a great story attached to it, and one he never had to embellish because it was inevitably great on its own merit) and would get a pass for it, because…well, he was Chris. Chris, the guy who would never hurt anyone or even say a bad thing about someone, the guy who always meant well, the guy who had enough good karma stacked in his favor for just being such a great guy, naturally, that it balanced out any random dumbness he might partake in. And that’s a lot of karma, if you knew some of the things he’s gotten out of. You don’t want to know. Okay, you probably do, but you’re not going to know it from me.

So here I was, having just come up with this grand plan for leaving my mark (literally, in fact) on my school and pulling off (even if by proxy) something that was dangerous and qausi-destructive and more-or-less illegal and so much more bad-boy cool than people would ever imagine I could be.

And not only did everyone think someone else had done it, but they thought Chris had done it…which somehow made it “cute”.

Chris made vandalism “cute”.

He not only defused the (at best misdemeanor) criminal aura of it, but ended up with credit for it. And chick points for it. Without doing a thing but showing up for school on Monday.

Clueless, innocent, karma-stacking bastard.

As the day passed, and the story circulated and the rumors flew, it seemed Chris had managed to convince at least some people with his very honest denial. Later in the afternoon, in fact, our Bible teacher, Mr. Schwartz (had “Spaceballs” come out while we were still in high school, I guarantee you we would have walked around all year saying “May the Schwartz be with you!” whenever he walked by. Your timing sucks, Mel Brooks…) walked up to me while I was sitting near the admin building. He was smiling and overly-personable, and immediately went into some kind of riff about “Hey, that was pretty funny what happened on the senior wall, wasn’t it?” I kind of agreed that it was. He then, without dropping his smile, quickly asked, “Who did it?”

Okay, did he really think he was going to catch me so off-guard with his winning smile that I was going to accidentally rat someone out? And then sit there dumbfounded going, “Oops. Curse you, Schwartz! Foiled again!”.

I simply, without, hopefully, giving anything away with my face, just as personably answered him, “I don’t know”.

Yeah. I lied to my Bible teacher. To his face. Table for one? Next to the river of brimstone?

So while many came to believe Chris’ insistence of innocence, many still, probably to this day, believe that he was the one who, for one glorious day before the repainting erased it forever, adorned the senior wall with a popular catch phrase and brought a little bit of Hollywood into a religious school that didn’t want any of us knowing that Hollywood even existed. The attempts of Wayne and I to grab ourselves a little piece of criminal cred and roguish notoriety were wiped away, as well, with a paint roller and a can of off-white. I wonder if anyone even gave it a second thought when the yearbooks came out and my quote below my photo was “No running in the hallways”? Nah, they probably thought I was just trying to horn in on Chris’s fame. Or maybe because it said “running” instead of “runnig”, they didn’t make the connection.

But I’m sure it’s all for the best. The lure of danger and a bad (but the good kind of) rep is appealing in youth, but you see things more clearly as you get older. Me, I prefer my reputation be built on character, and that people remember me for the good things I’ve done. I believe in rules, and I believe in following them. I did my share of dumb things in my youth, but learned lessons from them all, and think I’ve come out okay on the other side. My life’s turned out all right. And who knows how I could have ended up if fate had worked things differently, and I HAD found myself accused of being involved in an act of wanton school vandalism?

I could have ended up a successful dentist. Musician. Community leader. Husband. Father of two.

Sigh.

#$@&ing karma.

Signed,

Mike