When I was a teen, the cool kids had a phone in their bedroom. The rich kids had their own line with a phone number that was separate from the rest of the house. I didn’t, mostly because my mom didn’t want to “waste money” on that sort of frivolity. For those of you who don’t remember this, ask your parents. It was in the days before the Internet, before cell phones, you know, the ancient days.
So of course, whenever I would be talking to a friend (usually girls), my mother would pick up the phone and say embarrassing things like “Did you take out the trash? Did you do your homework yet?” – you know, the sorts of things that mortify teens by letting other teens know that you have parents.
I had a curfew of midnight on any night when there was no school the next day. The thing is, my parents always went to bed around 10 pm. There were many nights that I would stay out later than curfew, and my parents would frequently catch me staying out until 2 or 3 in the morning, until I hatched my devious plan.
I would call my house from wherever I happened to be at 11:30 or so. The phones would ring throughout the house. My father would pick up the phone at his bedside, and answer it while half asleep. In his groggy, half asleep voice, I would hear: “Hello?”
I would reply, “Dad, I’ve got it.”
He would say: “Tell your friends to stop calling so late.”
Then I would resume whatever I was doing, safe in the knowledge that they wouldn’t catch me, as long as I was home before my dad woke up in the morning.
Like the chemistry story, I didn’t tell my mother about this until Dad’s funeral. Mom found it quite funny, and still tells the story to her friends when she talks about all of the funny situations I got myself into as a young lad.
5 Comments
ChuckInBama · March 18, 2022 at 9:20 am
OK, I chuckled at that one…
21stCenturyCassandra · March 18, 2022 at 9:33 am
Reminds me of a story from several decades ago. I was 8 or 9 and we were on a chartered school bus to Albuquerque for the state junior bowling tournament. Some of the high school kids had snuck some beer and booze on board and were having a little party in the back of the bus. Until a beer can rolled all the way down the aisle to the front of the bus.
When we got to the hotel, my dad, who was the coach, did a room inspection and found the stash. He poured it all down the drain. Later one of the high school kids said to him, “Lou, that was a pretty dumb stunt we pulled.”
Dad said, “Yeah, Rex, it was.”
Rex asked him, “Did you ever do anything like that when you were my age?”
Dad replied, “Yeah, a few times.”
Rex asked, “What did they do to you?”
Dad got a big grin on his face and said “I never got caught!”
Bart Simpson · March 18, 2022 at 1:12 pm
The best was when your girlfriend threw rocks at the window at 1AM.
I learned from my older brothers to put some boards, a basketball or globe, under a blanket and sneak out the window.
Mom was a work at home transcriptionist so we had the triple phone line and you could call out on the Dictaphone but if you sat too close it would feedback like a guitar by an amplifier.
We rarely got caught except for the time we tried to sneak the gravity bong past in a duffel bag.
Once we stayed out all night in a subdivision sector two zones away and in the morning a buddy’s dad busted in and beat us all down.
Good times!
Shelby · March 18, 2022 at 6:56 pm
High school chemistry class had thin magnesium strips that could be pushed down into a cigarette. The guy who always bummed a smoke in the third floor bathroom was given one of these ‘loads’ and when he lit it it immediately burned down to the filter…..From then on he brought his own…It never occurred to us we could have killed him with that.
Brett Lively · March 19, 2022 at 6:20 am
Absolutely brilliant
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