Run!

 

I have done some stupid things in my life. But only once have I been chased by the police for one of those stupid things. One night my college roommates and I were sitting around. I mentioned this thing I had heard somebody say, about how you could take two lengths of surgical tubing, attach them to a funnel and use them to shoot water balloons over a long distance. You needed three people: one to hold the funnel and balloon and the other two to each hold an end of the tubing. Roommate one (we’ll call him D) said he knew about it but said you didn’t want to use surgical tubing because after a few shots it would break and snap you in the face. But, he said he had some rubber tubing that would work. Roommate number two (let’s call him V) said, “Let’s do it!”

Cautious me thought, maybe I didn’t think this through before mentioning it because this is something we could get in trouble for, I mean depending on where we shoot them, and if we were actually shooting them at people, this is starting to sound like a bad idea, but V had no inhibitions, and D didn’t seem inclined to pull him back. I didn’t want to be a party-pooper, so I said, “O---okay.”

It took a couple of days to get everything together. The night came when we were ready. We filled up a bucketful of water ballons and went out looking for a likely spot. At first, we found a grass-covered hill near our apartment. V grabbed one end of tubing. I grabbed another end, and D put a water balloon in the funnel and started walking backwards. He fired one off and it made a satisfying arc over the field and into the trees on the other side. Wow. It really flew. We fired off a few more and then V and D decided we needed more interesting targets.

They found a street on a hill that overlooked 18^th street. If we timed it right, we could hit a car coming up 18^th street. Yeah, this is where I started thinking maybe this isn’t such a good idea. But the other two were keen for it and it was a challenge to try to hit a moving target from at least a quarter of a mile away. I was talked into it. 18^th was not an overly busy street so we would get one car every minute or two. The first shots were really bad, but we got better as we went along. But we never did actually hit a car (good thing). At some point a neighbor who lived on the street stepped out to see what we were doing. We gave him some lame excuse and he went back inside.

The procedure we decided on was that if a car on 18^th signaled that it was turning up our street, we would back off, step to the side and pretend to be innocent. At one point we saw a car signaling to turn and we stepped to the side, but then someone said, “it’s a cop!” D went one direction and V went another, but they were each still holding their end of the device, so they were both looking like versions of Wyle E. Coyote running away while holding onto the Acme rubber band. I didn’t have that problem because I just dropped my end and ran. The Coyotes must have resolved their problem because V was now running free near me and a cop had gotten out of the car and was chasing us. I was a sprinter on our college track team and I was in full sprint mode going across a field. I tripped on something and went down. V said, “are you okay?” I didn’t answer. I just popped up and kept running outpacing V and the cop and I was not looking back. I don’t know how fast I was running, but with all the adrenaline I’m sure I would have broken my personal best in the 400 meters (Running through that field in the dark, if I had stepped in a hole, I could have easily broken my leg). I lost track of V, and I didn’t care. I ran across 18^th, then onto a side road, and another side road, and another and then hid out in a dark place while I tried to catch my breath and let my heart settle down. I waited to see if any police were still in pursuit. I didn’t see anyone. I very slowly made my way back to our apartment using as indirect a route as I could.

I made it back to the apartment and D and V were there laughing and elated. I wasn’t laughing. Running through that field I was terrified. Nothing gets your heart racing like being chased by the police. But the laughter came later as I realized we had survived this and how stupid we were. We figured that the neighbor who came outside must have called the cops. I can’t say I blame him. That being said, please don’t try this at home. This could have gone wrong in so many ways.

I can tell this story now, because I think the statute of limitations on youthful stupidity with water balloons has long since run out (surely, it has, right?)

Star Liner