The DU Lounge

... we had the cops on our street at least twice a week. Favorite pasttimes were stealing stuff from the stockroom at the local supermarket and walking all over the roofs of the strip mall at the bottom of the cliff we lived on, which drove people crazy. (There was a pet store there, too, for awhile, and it sent the dogs into a barking fury). Let's see... getting into rock fights with the snobs (assumed) from the parochial school near our elementary school in their cute little uniforms (not really fights, as they didn't throw any stones back. Must have been Christians). Stealing lumber and other stuff from some of the other stores at the strip mall. Playing violent "king of the hill" games with the kids the next street over, which occasionally drew blood. Personally, I had a tooth knocked out twice, but they were baby teeth anyway. My mother like to faint away, though, when I came home with my face covered in blood. I used to get in trouble occasionally for hitting girls, but hey, they hit me first, and some of them were actually bigger than I (I was a pretty scrawny kid). Later I would get in trouble for retaliating on bullies. It's so often that way: the punk hits me, but nobody sees it, but inevitably if I hit back, someone in Authority would see, and it was the Board of Education for Eric. I also got brought before the Board for jumping a kid who was teasing the class "retard." They used to torment the shit out of that poor kid (his name was Girard), and one day I just snapped and tried very earnestly (for an eight-year-old) to kill the bastard who was making him cry. Not that I liked Girard much myself, you understand, but I couldn't sanction his abuse. Mind you, I was one of the most well-behaved kids on the street. I remember when a Jewish family moved in, a bunch of the kids (possibly including my own elder brother) went out one night and TP'd the place and chalked anti-Semitic slogans on the walls, which made the kid's Mom understandably furious. Mind you, the kid himself was a real prick, but that's no excuse for what they did.

So yeah, lots of "harmless fun" that sits squarely between real bad behavior and the kind of "Leave it to Beaver" behavior that is the imagined ideal.

-- Mal