This is a story (completely true) that I wrote for my English Composition class. It happened during my senior year in high school.
I thought Y’all might get a good laugh!
Sex, Cigars, and a Half Naked Redneck
Strange events transpire on Thanksgiving day. Pilgrims and Indians eat in harmony, Publix is closed, and people like my friend “John” get thrown out of others’ houses. It’s with this theme that Thanksgiving 1999 comes to mind. The names have been changed to protect the innocent, and/or stupid.
I was sitting in my garage at about 9:00 PM, enjoying the relaxation it affords. I had just dialed a phone number and settled back into my favorite folding chair when my ears were assaulted by the squealing of cheap, worn rubber and the rhythmic clacking of a worn Nissan engine. I looked up to see John’s beat up red truck anxiously rolling down the driveway. It appeared almost drunken, on headlight pointed at the ground and the other over the horizon.
While the expression portrayed by the headlights seemed comic, it couldn’t compare with the expression on John’s face as he lept from the truck shirtless. He had the appearance of a reject from an insane asylum, accented by his red cheeks and wild eyes. As he approached me, he started shaking his head
“It’s bad,” he muttered, “Oh God it’s bad!”
“What happened?” I asked with surprise and shock ingrained in my voice.
“We were… and she… and the door opened… and she saw everything… it’s bad! I can’t go back to Jane’s house”, he managed to utter as his body began to quiver.
“What do you want me to do?”, I asked.
“Get in the truck, and bring something to smoke.”
I got into the truck, grabbing a pack of Swisher cigars on the way. John started the engine, and fought his trembling hands lighting a cigar as he piloted the dented mass of Japanese steel toward toward Tom Brown Park.
“It’s not the fact that her mom walked in on us and threw me out of the house that worries me,” he said. “It’s the fact that her dad may not let me borrow his boat now.” I was happy to see that John was back to his usual self, priorities arranged with his usual precision. He was an opportunist to the bone, and always thought situations out to their logical conclusions. I was happy to see he was pulling himself together.
Once we arrived at Tom Brown, we walked to the baseball field and sat on the bleachers talking a while. He was starting to lose his tension, and realize that the world as we knew it was not coming to a sulfuric halt. We talked a while longer, and finally decided to leave the park and visit our other friend “Jerry.” As John summoned the engine from its lukewarm slumber back to fiery life, it appeared that our problems were far behind…
But it wasn’t so easy. As we pulled out of the dirt path and onto Easterwood Road, a pair of lights started flashing in the rearview mirror. “Dammit!” yelled John. We sat in quiet anticipation as an extremely plump Tallahassee Police Department officer waddled toward the truck. The smell of cigars was still quite strong in the truck, as John’s nerves led him to chain- smoke them all the way to the park. Arriving at the window, he demanded our driver’s licenses and waddled back to his car, running them through the Police database to check our records. Upon arriving back at the car, he spoke in a loud harsh tone,
“What are you gentlemen doing in the park after close?” John and I looked at each other. What would we say? That John is too stupid to lock a door? Seeing no easy answer in sight, my still half-naked friend said “Me and my girlfriend had a fight, and we needed to talk.” How on earth he could manage to utter such a statement still baffles me. The officer had a blank stare for several seconds, then his eyes became huge and he jumped about an inch into the air. He looked back at our ID cards and said “Mr. Boles, Mr. Smith, I don’t know what you were doing here, nor do I care. What I know is that you should do it in the comfort of your own homes.”
At this point, I remembered a news article from about a year before. It stated that Tom Brown Park is a hotbed of covert homosexual activity. Suddenly, I understood the officer’s strange behavior. He thought we were dropping by the park for a little tumble and a cigar to celebrate. My cheeks burned crimson with this realization as the officer returned our licences. John still sported the same confused expression, but seemed relieved that we weren’t being arrested or written a citation.
In closing, I’d like to point out several important lessons learned that night. First, and foremost, if you’re going to play “twister” with your girlfriend in her parents house, make sure the door is locked. Second, smoking is bad, and makes excellent circumstantial evidence that you are a degenerate. Lastly, whatever you do for Thanksgiving, do not go to Tom Brown Park with a half naked guy in a Nissan Pickup.
