Here’s another confession of a mean thing I did as a kid — though I should add the meanness directed at me over my childhood was easily 1,000 x more than how much meanness I gave back to the world. Readers may remember when I found that guy’s day planner and called him up using my pitch-shifter guitar pedal, to mock him on his answering machine.
This was probably a bit worse than that…
My parents owned 3 houses when I grew up… (Never content with the house they were in, they kept buying a new one, then deciding it wasn’t big enough, then buying another. They did it again after I moved out.) The 2nd of those was in a neighborhood called The Heights, in Lake Ridge, Woodbridge, VA. I lived there from age 4 til age 8.5, right at the start of 4th grade.
The old house. Of course I have zero pictures of it.
I had a few neighborhood friends, like my next-door-neighbor Erica [who ultimately got pregnant really early], Robert “Obert” Beck, Chris Navarro (no relation to Dave Navarro), and Mike Enis. Eventually we moved away, to the The Knolls neighborhood in Lake Ridge.
The new house, spruced up after I moved into my own house.
I saw my friend Mike Enis one last time after moving from The Heights to The Knolls. I guess we had a “play date” or something, as his mom brought him over and dropped him off for a few hours. I suppose we were around 10 years old or so.
We hung out in the woods for awhile…
Woods. Always fun. Especially if you're immune to pollen and mosquitoes.
As we came back inside, I stopped to take a leaf off the mint bushes by the rear sliding glass door to our house. I loved getting mint straight from a real bush, and ate leaves off the plant pretty frequently. I wish we had one at our own house.
Mint Leaves, by Art_Es_Anna@flickr
Here’s where the evil began…
“What? You actually ate the mint leaf? I was JOKING, you know!”
“What? You DIDN’T eat them?”
“No! Those things are poisonous! You’re gonna die!”
That was the gist of things. I told him it was time to meet his sweet death.
Nice to meet 'ya.
He didn’t believe me at first, but I kept at it. Kept telling him that he was going to drop dead in about 10 minutes. I eventually picked up a random thick book off the bookshelf — something that looked scientific.
Because if it's from a book, it must be true, right Mr. Quayle?
I went on and described the effects: Within 10 minutes you would start to get dizzy, go into convusions, and die of painful seizures. Of course at this point he was completely believing me.
I am, after all, an expert on science! Look at my brilliant science fair project!
Needless to say… I let the 10 minutes pass, and he may have cried or shaken or something. I don’t remember. I actually figured that since he wasn’t able to come over [I hadn't seen him in 2 years] due to the distance [1.4 miles] between our houses, that it made him a good mark for a prank like this. After all, I wouldn’t want to freak out one of my CURRENT friends.
Yeah… I don’t think I ever saw him again after that.
Sorry, Mike! I don’t know what came over me, but at this point, this story does more to entertain my life than you do, because I don’t know you anymore! So I guess it was the right thing to do in the long run, in a very calculating way. But in an empathetic way, I do feel kinda bad about convincing you that you were going to die. And thus, this confessional. Which is also kind of a “look how fucked up I am” brag, in a way. I am both ashamed of and thankful for this story.
I guess I was a bit of a troubled kid…
Drawn about 4 years after this story.
The end.
Mood: tuna
Music: Pink Floyd – Money
February 28, 2011 at 4:38 PM
Poor Mike.
I remember one time in elementary school, I was hanging out on the playground with Donald Gonzales. One of those floaty feather things floated by, and Donald said, “I heard that some of these are poisonous!” and he reached out and grabbed it. I was like “Wait, how do you know that one wasn’t poisonous?” and he said “I didn’t, but if it was, I’d be dead right now.”
To this day, everytime one of those things floats by, I think of Donald Gonzales, and his lucky dodge of certain death.
March 1, 2011 at 9:17 AM
You were troubled because you fell short in your worship of the dark lord below, I’m guessing.
March 1, 2011 at 10:21 AM
LMAO :)
March 1, 2011 at 1:42 PM
Mom: “Clever read, Clint. :)
But honestly, as far as childhood evil goes, your behavior here pales beside what many kids do. Still, it was undoubtably more creative than usual, and yeah, i’m sure it briefly struck terror into Mike’s heart. B…tw, do you recall me telling you that my cousin Steve did something similar to me? Think telephone wires. The difference was that he told me it would take THREE DAYS for me to die, so my terror was greatly prolonged.”