Flashback Friday!

Here's a funny bit. I started trying to figure out what I wanted to Flash! about this week and went, "Wait a minute, have I already done that?". I've done so many of these now, I fear I'm gonna do that other thing that geezers do. Repeat myself. Bad enough I'm subjecting you to my Flashbacks!, now you're at risk of getting my Reruns! So, I checked back over my archives and I think you're all safe from that...today.

This little tale is from my high school days. During a time when I was running in a pack of four girls who were my closest friends in the world. I'm actually still fairly close with one of them. In fact, she's been known to wander through here from time to time. This particular story, however, does not feature her. Luck of the draw, I assure you. As there are plenty that do feature Dee. Taking those to the grave, though. Cross my heart...;)

Most of the fun centered around the fact that my friend PJ had the most envious of living arrangements. And while we were in high school together, PJ, Dee, Robin and I made the most of that situation. You see, PJ had an older brother who was away at college (even during the summer months) and her parents had a houseboat on a lake many miles from River City. EVERY weekend during the summer, PJ's parents were away. Every weekend. And almost every weekend during the summer, we all spent the weekend at PJ's house.

There was no curfew. No one telling us we couldn't have boys over. No one stopping us from emptying the liquor cabinet. No one telling us what to do at all. There were even times that we actually spent the night in that big house, too. Of course, none of our parents knew that her parents weren't there, nor did they have any clue about all the things we were doing. We were simply four seventeen and eighteen year old girls turned loose in the big city. Then, I thought it was the best thing EVER! Now, the idea that my own (similarly aged) kids would be in that situation scares the SHIT out of me!

While there are many, many, many, many, MANY debaucherous adventures from those summer weekends, some of which will NEVER see the light of day on a Flashback Friday!, I wanted to share one that I felt truly illustrated how most of those weekends went.

Robin and PJ were the only two of us that had cars in those days, and as Robin lived closest to me, it fell to her to chauffeur me over to PJ's on this particular Friday evening. After sitting around talking and watching some tv, Robin remembered an invitation she'd received for all of us, and asked if we were game. PJ wasn't interested, but it sounded okay to me. (I'd just like to note, for the record, that most of the wisdom I have now, came AFTER my college days.)

A rather good-looking fellow we all knew had invited her (and any of her friends she wanted to bring in tow) to his house for a "midnight swim". You see, his WIFE AND KIDS were away at her mother's for the weekend, and I suppose the idea of having a bevy (or is it a 'brace'?) of scantily-clad teenaged girls spend a little time with him was somehow appealling. We'd all met him previously, and he was certainly affable enough. The allure of having the opportunity to do something we knew our parents would disapprove of made it sound all the better. Oh, we were wild, wicked girls, all right. Or we thought we were anyway.

Tricky plan, though, because Robin's ultra-conservative parents lived directly across the street from him and would be HIGHLY suspicious if they knew their young daughter was visiting this married man in the middle of the night. So, she and I decided to make a plan. And at that age, there are very few good plans. We slipped into our bathing suits and headed over to her neighborhood. After covertly parking her car on the next street over and cutting through someone's backyard, we found ourselves poolside.

He seemed to be pleased to see us and we all spent some time swimming in his pool under the cover of darkness. And we thought we were sooooo cool. Stupid kids. We had a couple wine coolers, laughed and flirted a little, but nothing notable happened. Seriously. It's not that kind of Flashback! Frankly, at the time, it didn't occur to me that he may have wanted more to happen. Not that I was so naive, just that I wasn't as good with the signals then.

At about 4AM, Robin and I decided to head back to PJ's and crash for a while. So we serpentined from his backyard to our car, removed the brush we'd used to camouflage it, looked around to make sure there were no pesky witnesses to dispose of, and then started the 3-4 mile trip back. About half way there, the car sputtered, stalled and died.

Great. It's 4AM. We are two teenaged girls WEARING BATHING SUITS broken down by the side of the road. Not much traffic going by to help us at that time of the day, and, well, we were afraid of what traffic MIGHT stop to help us, if you know what I mean. Worse, Robin didn't want to leave the car because her dad would be travelling this road in two hours and would pass by the car. You know, the car that was supposed to have been parked at PJ's house where her parents had tucked us all into our little sleeping bags many hours prior. She was worried she'd get into all kinds of trouble and be excluded from future antics at the house of PJ.

I kept trying to get her to just walk to PJ's and then we'd have PJ drive us back (with some helpers) to push the car off the road and we'd deal with it the next day sometime. But she was so upset and nervous, she just couldn't see any logic in my brilliant plan.

We'd been milling around the car, me mostly talking, her mostly freaking out, for about fifteen minutes, when we saw headlights pulling off the road behind us. We couldn't tell much about the vehicle except that it was large. Definitely larger than her mustang. And, before they even opened their doors and got out, I was getting a lump in my throat and could feel my heart beating faster. Part of that was probably because she'd been so upset that we hadn't even seen or heard them approach until we noticed the headlights that were maybe 15 feet from us.

One man got out on either side of the vehicle, and they headed towards us. From a distance, I could see uniforms and then started fearing police involvement in what was rapidly turning into a very bad dream. But, they weren't cops. There were paramedics. And they were driving an ambulance. The comedic notion of an ambulance stopping to help us, took the edge off for me (except for the fact that I still couldn't believe this was happening to me while dressed in a bathing suit...but...whatever), but Robin was still pretty shaky.

After looking at the car they advised that it appeared to be out of gas. Now, BECAUSE THEY HAD SOMEONE IN THE BACK OF THE AMBULANCE (I still can't believe they stopped and looked at the car when they were en route with a patient!!!), they couldn't really take us somewhere and bring us back. So we piled into the front seat of the ambulance (and it was quite cozy as I recall), had them drop us off at PJ's subdivision, and, after giving us their phone numbers (I don't think either of us ever called them), they left to finish their run. (I'd forgotten, until I wrote this, that PJ kept a key outside for us. Dee may have had her own, I can't remember.)

Waking PJ to have her help us get the car home was fun. She was furious with us because of the hour, but Robin was pretty adament that the car HAD to be off that road before her dad went to work at 6AM. And she was freaking out so badly that it was hard to ignore her, no matter how much you wanted to. PJ, Robin and I stopped at a gas station to pick up a little fuel, headed to her car, put it in and rejoiced when it started right up. Robin drove it back to PJ's and we all crashed happily ever after.

Another teenaged crisis narrowly averted. For that day...