The High Price of a Sugar High (830 hits)
Category: GeneralRating: 1.5 on 11 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Skinny Kenny (View user info) at 2005-11-21 14:48:45 EST
We were quite the entrepreneurs back then. We would leave for the walk to school an hour and a half or so before the 8:30 bell rang. You see, this was necessary in order to have time to get by the C-store so we could pick up a bag full of candy to sell to the other kids. You could never have enough. Jolly Ranchers (both the bite sized bits and the 3" long sticks), Fire Balls, Bits'O'Honey... You name it, we had it. If you had a sweet tooth, we had your fix. At not too high of a mark-up, either. Not like Al at the 5-Points Mobile who charges $9.19 for a sixer of Sam Adams.
It was always an adventure, that walk to school. Sometimes we'd cut through the parking lot of the now defunct community pool, and then through the woods behind. Sometimes - not often, but sometimes - we'd jump the pool's fence and fuck around in it's empty concrete carcass, breaking bottles in the deep end and piss-painting our names on the walls of the shallow. I did my first back flip off that high dive many years ago. In latter days, our troop would revisit this pool, draining it and shredding the 15' deep diving sump on our skateboards, but that was for later, after LSD, teenage angst, and Henry Rollins with a Black Flag had invaded our lives. For today, we were innocent youth, just looking to get ahead.
After stocking up at the local 7-11, we'd head on up the hill to Gresham Middle, where we plied our stock in trade. Occasionally, if we had enough time, I'd stop by the Fountain City Café to play pinball. All too often, this made me late because I kick so much ass at pinball. There was many a day I left that machine with the third ball still in the socket and 4 or 5 credits on the wheel, jetting out the door at 8:28 to beat the 8:30 bell.
Usually, when we got to school, there wasn't much to do other than sit in the cafeteria selling candy to all the other kids and waiting for first period to start. Today, however, was to be different. Today, my views on my fellow humans, and the world in general, would forever change. Today was the day that Darryl Monroe and Jerry Hewitt would get into it. This was the day I would go from seeing fighting as two guys scuffling on the ground, kicking up dirt, to seeing it as a real way to shed blood and do grievous bodily harm to your opponent. This would be the day I realized that you could lose your life over something so simple as a disagreement over who got the last Tootsie Roll.
There's no need for me to go into detail. Knives were pulled, and lives were lost: one literally, and one to the confines of prison walls.
Things changed that day.
On the way home from school that afternoon, we were cutting through the woods behind the pool, talking about what had happened. My friend spotted a brown paper sack, stashed up underneath an overhanging bough of dense scrub. As he pulled it out and opened it up, we caught our first glimpse of what was to become our holy grail... It was a sack full of Playboys and Hustlers.
Our lives were never to be the same. We had taken our first giant leap into the world of adulthood, not realizing what vile staples of modern society violence and pornography had become.
User Reviews
Submitted by nahnoneofit (user info) at 2005-11-22 03:10:09 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
good but i think i just read the same thing a couple lines down...
Submitted by DropItLikeItsDisgusting (user info) at 2005-11-21 21:23:59 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Could've been awesome but you screwed it up by not telling us anything.
Submitted by MyTeeOne (user info) at 2005-11-21 17:35:41 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Great nostalgia, but you skipped over a deadly knife fight. Becuase of that, tt seems like you introduced the story but didn't bother writing it.
Submitted by Zoidberg (user info) at 2005-11-21 15:40:12 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Just to clarify, the "what the hell" comment is because I've written my fair share of maudlin "oh childhood innocence where have ye gone?" posts as well.
Submitted by SkinnyKenny (user info) at 2005-11-21 15:23:04 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Pentameter (user info) at 2005-11-21 15:11:58 (#)
Ranking: 2
Now I want one of those huge Pixy Stix...you know, the ones that were three feet long?
------------------------------------------------------
I remember them well. I don't think I ever actually bought one, though. Some deep rooted sense of self preservation must have saved me from myself.
Submitted by Zoidberg (user info) at 2005-11-21 15:15:15 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Threatened to slip into self parody a few times. Overly maudlin. But what the hell.
Submitted by Pentameter (user info) at 2005-11-21 15:11:58 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Now I want one of those huge Pixy Stix...you know, the ones that were three feet long?
Submitted by TigerLilly (user info) at 2005-11-21 15:08:12 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Great post. I loved it.
Submitted by FartSmeller (user info) at 2005-11-21 15:02:03 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Ah, man the fucking memories.
+2 great nostalgia...
Submitted by wookie (user info) at 2005-11-21 14:53:50 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I have to give a +2 for candy, porn stashes, pool skating, and Black Flag (although I'll take the Keith Morris-era Black Flag over the Rollins-era).
Submitted by WildcatMcGee (user info) at 2005-11-21 14:53:37 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
What the fuck, someone got killed over a tootsie roll? Yeah, prison time could never be more deserved if that's the case.