You've probably noticed a common thread among most of my posts in the last two weeks. I basically did a lot of terrible things. It started in December of 1990 and went through February of 1991. It lasted all winter long. (Official winter, not Denver winter.) I refer to this period as My Season of Madness. It seemed like I allowed myself to engage in activities that I could have gotten thrown in jail for. The title of this blog indicates that I think of myself as a loser. A real loser would have gotten arrested for this nonsense, but I was just plain lucky that I didn't experience any long-term consequences. (That's actually not true. One of the incidents somewhat affected me for more than 10 years, but that will be the subject of a post WAY in the future.)
What follows is the finale for this era. This was by no means the end of serious trouble I could have gotten into, but it capped off this bizarre three-month period in my life.
One night, Rid called me to come pick him up from somewhere around Arvada and he told me to bring the Oldsmobile with me. There were four other people with him, three girls and one guy. I had only met one of the girls previously. Rid told me I needed to drive over to Sheld's house. There was someone else there who needed to be picked up. Rid told me to stay in the car while he went to the house. This tall guy I had met previously came out of the house and started to get into the car. Suddenly, Sheld came running out of the house. She was screaming that her father had just hit her. The tall guy clinched his fists and started to go back into the house. However, Sheld and Rid were able to stop him and got him to go back into the car.
We quickly took off. There were eight of us jam-packed in the car. I'd never had this many people in the car all at once. On top of that, everybody was yelling and screaming about what we were going to do next. As Sheld was now a runaway, the other guy in the car (not the tall one) kept saying stuff about her situation and followed it up with, "That's the law!" (From this point on, I will refer to him as Law Guy.) Law Guy said that he could keep some of the people at his house and we would take them there. Then Sheld asked if she and one of the other girls (named Meld) could spend the night at my house. Since I had been down that path before, I said yes, even though it meant I was harboring a teenage runaway. (I had met her father, but he had no idea what my full name was, my phone number or where I lived. It was a calculated risk.)
First, we had to drop Rid off somewhere so he could be picked up by his mom. It was in the parking lot of a shopping center. There was a dentist's office there. His mom was already there waiting for him. I can only wonder what she thought was going on with six other people in my car. As he was getting in her car, there was a sheriff's patrol car circling the lot.
We left the shopping center. The patrol car started following us. Everyone started freaking out again. Law Guy shouted, "If he pulls us over, he can't ask for the identity of anyone else in the car. That's the law!"
I dropped Law Guy, Tall Guy, the girl I knew and the girl I didn't know off at Law Guy's house. I was ready to drive Sheld and Meld over to my apartment. Sheld asked me to stop over at Rock Island and pick up this guy she knew. We went into the club. It was all ages night. Sheld found Knew Guy and we went back out to the car. Now, we could all go back to my apartment. I only had the mattress, which could hold two people and the futon, which only had room for one. Knew Guy said he didn't think he could sleep there. The girls invited him to share the mattress with him, but he declined. He decided to go find another friend's to crash at and he left the apartment. Sheld said, "You can't let him walk out in the snow alone! Go get him back in here!" I ran outside, but he vanished. I couldn't see him anywhere.
I went back inside. Sheld said, "Hey! Let's order pizza!" I said, "Okay, we can do that." "Then we can attack the delivery guy and get the pizza for free!" "No, I'll just pay for it." I ordered the pizza and pre-paid with my credit card so that the girls wouldn't go rogue on me. While we were waiting, Sheld called over to Law Guy's house to see how everyone was doing. I wasn't aware of this, but the girl I knew had been reported as a runaway and the cops had come over to the house. They took her back to her parents, but didn't arrest anybody else at the house. I got a little nervous about the prospect of the police showing up at my apartment, but was still confident that no one knew where I was.
After eating and hanging out for a bit, we went to bed. The next morning, Meld told me she just started her period and she didn't have any money to get tampons. Sheld was still sleeping, so we walked over to a Diamond Shamrock that was just a few blocks away from my house. We got to talk on the way over. We didn't really talk much to each other the night before, so this was our first chance to actually get to know each other. She told me SHE HAD RUN AWAY FROM HOME! That meant I was harboring TWO RUNAWAYS! I was glad when Sheld woke up and I could take them to catch a bus somewhere. Fortunately, they didn't ask to spend another night. They may have imposed a little, but they likely knew not to overstay their welcome.
I am glad to say I never harbored another teenage runaway again. My Season of Madness was over!
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