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The Seeds of Delinquency
Recalling the origins of my misbehavior
A few years back I wrote a book detailing all the juvenile, immature, borderline criminal stuff my friends and I did in college. A full book. We did a lot of shit. Somehow, despite all the shenanigans we managed to graduate. It’s a wonder we never went to jail, although we came close a few times.
As I was driving around the countryside recently, I noticed some roadside mailboxes and realized my book didn’t give any insight into how exactly I became a borderline juvenile delinquent. To be honest, I don’t really like using that term. I prefer to say active imagination.
As far back as I can remember, my friends and I were creating mischief / wreaking havoc / had very active imaginations. It all started innocently enough in Elementary school with tame pranks like ding-dong ditching — ringing some poor fool’s doorbell and then running like hell. In our never-ending quest for more excitement, we’d challenge ourselves to wait until we saw the doorknob turning before sprinting off the porch in a mad dash to safety. Then there was that one prank where we’d pretend to hold a wire taut across the street, then watch in amusement as drivers stopped, completely befuddled and bewildered. Eventually we graduated to more sophisticated (malicious) pranks. Like that one winter night on our way home from…
