Longtime readers will recall my previous tales of embarrassing teenage loserdom, so I'd like to share a tale of just exactly how AWESOME I was when I was in high school.
Goosey night, 1995. (In New Jersey, we called it "Goosey Night," but I know other people call it "Mischief Night" or "The Night Before Halloween When All Hell Breaks Loose"). My best friend Laurie and I had secretly conspired to go out and misbehave. We weren't bad girls (at ALL! at all!) but I think I recall a conversation that went something like this:
Int: Laurie's bedroom. Becky and Laurie lie on their tummies, sketching tributes to R.E.M. with a set of colored pencils. A bowl of pretzels and Corn Pops sits on the carpet (this was in the pre-anti-carb phase. Back then, we avoided fat at all costs, so low-fat anything was fair game).
BECKY: Wanna hear something kinda dumb?
LAURIE: Sure.
BECKY: You know what I love? I love waking up on Halloween and looking outside and seeing who got toilet papered.
LAURIE: Yeah!
BECKY: And then I love walking to school and seeing all the toilet paper everywhere! And when it rains and there are just wet clumps of toilet paper all over the place? Awesome!
LAURIE: Maybe we should go out on Goosey Night.
BECKY: No! We couldn't! But ... I bet it's real fun to toilet paper someone's house!
LAURIE: We should do it!
BECKY: Ohmigosh, no way! WAIT! Let's be hardcore! Let's totally do it.
And so, on Goosey Night, Laurie came over to my house. And my mom always bought toilet paper in bulk at BJ's, so we grabbed a few rolls and set out to do some damage. We passed a friend's house and pondered toilet papering it, but we didn't want her parents to get mad at us. We passed another friend's house and debated wrapping their tree in toilet paper -- but what if someone saw us? And yelled at us? That was too much for us to take. We went to our old elementary school and thought about toilet papering the playground -- but what if a kid tripped and fell on the toilet paper the next day? We'd feel horrible!
We walked around for another half hour or so, but then it started getting cold. So we walked back to my house.
"Hey," I said. "My parents are inside watching Seinfeld and I bet they won't notice if we toilet paper the tree!"
Laurie was hesitant, but I threw a roll of toilet paper up and over a branch of the twin maple trees that used to stand on what used to be my front lawn. And, ohmigosh, it was CRAZY fun. Laurie joined in. Smothering our giggles, we draped the trees with toilet paper. Lots and lots of toilet paper. It was more fun than anything I'd ever imagined. And we were *so* artistic! It was truly a work of toilet papering art.
The next morning, my mom looked out the window and said, "Hey, we got toilet papered!"
I snickered.
My mom said, "Did you guys toilet paper your own house?"
I just snickered again.
My mom said, "You did, didn't you?"
I admitted that yes, we had toilet papered our own house. And I thought that was totally awesome. Because if we had toilet papered anyone else's house, they would have been mad and yelled at us! So, by toilet papering my house, we could misbehave without really misbehaving.
It made perfect sense to me.
Last year, I told this story to my boyfriend. And he snickered. Apparently, it is very, very lame to toilet paper one's own house.
But, personally, I thought, and still think, that it was TOTALLY AWESOME.
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2 comments:
I would have papered our own tree, if I'd been bright enough to think of it way back when. But MY mother would have freaking killed me for it.
Oh, and in my part of Canada, we call it "Mat Night." (Because originally, before papering and egg-throwing, the evening was devoted to stealing peoples' welcome mats. Oooh! Canadians are soooo naughty!)
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