In the year 2000 I had discovered my identity. It had eluded me for many years with some pretty impressive guerilla tactics but a new era had to begin.
As a result I decided I should start walking around school in mocassins with a tight little poof encircling the ankle. Very comfortable. Rain or shine, the moccasins were worn. “Luke! It’s pouring out here, think the moccasins will hold.” I would look down, squish my toes so we both could see the little bubbles coming out of the top, “Definitely.”
This was the year I wore a deer skin backpack. Likely harvested from a back woods garage sale by my mother, it had a great solid rectangle shape just right for 1.5 books. The moment I walked into my first class with the backpack, the guy behind me jumps out of his seat, snorting and bellowing like the sea winds, “What the fuck is that smell?” Deer skin does not age without odor.
To cap it off, this year I thought I was too cool for school so I went on Senior Spring Break Trip. When the dust settled our team had been assembled.
- Giant Tick – A larger than life individual both in mind and spirit who has moved to Japan to make himself look even larger. He was planning on ‘banging’ 58 girls that week in Puerto Vallarta and he came prepared.
- Fire Crotch – Tall red head with pale skin who walks around 86% of the time like he just doesn’t have a clue. Very effective with ladies and men it seemed.
- Hairy Chest – Can attract ladies to him from several stone throws away. Uses his very hairy chest to keep them around. Knew a little spanish.
- Myself – Just started drinking shortly before this trip. School nerd.
I have highlighted the Tick in the list above because he turns out to be the protagonist in this story. Puerto Vallarta Spring Break was amazing and deserves a blog in itself but I do need to highlight the two things I can remember mostly about the Tick from that weekend.
- He arrives, parading around his giant box of condoms screaming out “I am going to judge the amount of fun I have this week by the number of these I use.” After 4 days the Tick had visibly failed in his efforts and likely failed in his life as well but that remained to be seen. When he was napping one day, I opened up many of his condoms and laid them chaotically on the floor, and laid a few on his face and body. I woke him up violently and yelled at him while pointing to the condoms “Are we having fun yet?” He was not impressed.
- The two of us arrived back to the hotel and followed a group of people back to their room for some drinks. The girl I was attached to seemed to be enjoying herself until we got into the room and sat down on the bed with everyone around. In a state of tiredness and drunkenness, I started to kiss and suck this girls back. But with my eyes closed I started to wander to far off lands and forget myself there in that hotel room. From the way the Tick described it to me, I started to forcibly french kiss her back, slightly jarring her and making conversation awkward. I started to rub my nose druel all over her in an effort to dig my tongue far down the small of her back. The Tick had to smack me and say “What the fuck are you doing?” To which I could only reply “Some good salt back here.”
So the Giant Tick finished Puerto Vallarta in generally a blah mood. We all went to our respective houses when we got home and that was that. The Tick had more on his plate, however, from the moment he entered his house. He was welcomed with a letter informing him that he was going to court for statutory rape with his girlfriend who was still 17 and the Tick was recently 18. The details are not important, it was the way in which the Tick reacted.
The night I got back I received a call from the Tick. In a very monotone and hushed voice, he requested my presence at the IHOP on Sycamore. He would explain the details when I got there but I had to be “Ready for something big” and I had to wear black. I was intrigued and scampered to the IHOP after finding a half black shirt.
“Gentleman, I am glad you have decided to join me on this mission tonight.” says the Tick with his head bowed down close to the table implying we should do the same.
“I have asked you here so we can agree on what we are going to do when we execute operation Dark Terror. Dark Terror is a collective effort to bring justice and retribution to myself, my family, and my friends,” he contined. I looked at the other guys around to see if they felt the same way i did that I did not feel like I personally needed retribution or justice.
After drawing some wiggly lines on the back of a place mat we headed to the back of Tick’s faded brown oldsmobile, the kind with a giant trunk. He pops open the huge trunk door and reveals the following.
- 144 eggs in cartons
- a goat head
- a few packs of chicken hearts
- a few packs of chicken feet
- a giant bucket of bleach
- More ghoulish goods from the chinese market
We had decided that I would be in charge of the chicken hearts and goat head since I was the only one that would touch them. The plan was to sneak up to his girlfriends parents house and unleash all the contents of his trunk in a sneaky and clever way. The tick was in charge of the bucket of bleach since he was the only one who could carry it around. Someone took control of the chicken feet and I had my items.
We parked two houses down in a rather well lit neighborhood. We got out and snuck our way to the house. I began plopping chicken hearts on the walk way leading up to the door. When I got to the door I looked behind me and I could see a classic image that will never leave my brain. Imagine a Giant Tick walking on a freshly cut lawn with a soft yellow light around him as he saunters around the lawn whistling to himself as he sprinkles bleach over the lawn as if he was feeding the pigeons.
I turned back to the job at hand which was to rest the goat head on the door handle so when they opened the door, it would fall into their house, and hopefully touch a fancy white dog or something. Just when I placed the skull, the lights turned on and the door opened. I looked up, made eye to eye contact with someone I had never seen before and they would have had no way to know who I was, and then I began running and kicking off my sandals so I could run faster barefoot. I sprinted a street down and then hid in some trash cans.
I waited maybe 10 minutes, then sprinted to our rendezvous point which is where I was collected but then in a fantastic demonstration of bad idea making, we circled back around, drove right up to the house, got out of the car, and started throwing 144 eggs. Now 3 people throwing 144 eggs is difficult, time consuming, and to be accurate, you really need to concentrate. It might have taken 30 seconds to unload all of them. For about 10 seconds of that a man was running directly at us, bald head pointing down to give us a splendid target. He regretted his choice to sprint across the road immediately.
I always wonder how long the guy was looking at me through the keyhole trying to figure out what I was doing.
“Is that… Are those… chicken hearts?” while squinting through the peep hole. “Wait. No. It can’t be. Is that… Nooo. Really? A goat head?” As he jumps up to shoo me away.