Since this is my first post on Steemit, I thought I'd share a true story about myself. I figure why not give the Steemit community a little of who I am.
The first story that comes to mind is the time I made a very bad decision. It takes place about 20 years ago. I was 15 years old, bored and looking for excitement. Unfortunately, my friends at the time were just like me, so none of us were in a state of mind to make good decisions. And, we often did make horrible decisions, like this day in question.
It must have been a Sunday afternoon. I remember, because I had to work that night at Little Caesar's, and I had school the next day (I didn't work on weeknights). It had been raining all day. We lived next to a wash, which sat next to a major road that had tons of traffic, no matter the day or time. My best friend, whom I'll call Eric (that's not his real name), and I loved to mess around near the wash, whether riding our bikes, picking on the neighbor kids or simply kicking back and relaxing on the hill that looked over the wash. We spent nearly all our free time hanging out here.
That is, until this Sunday afternoon when we decided we were in the mood to prank someone. Anyone. I don't recall whose original idea it was. But, one of us thought it would be cool to make a fake human body and put it somewhere near the wash and watch from afar as an unwitting bystander walked up on the dummy, thinking it was a real body.
"Yes!" we both yelled simultaneously as we high-fived each other in my bedroom. "This is going to be awesome!"
Let me just preface the rest of the story with this: it wasn't awesome.
We looked around my room, which was scattered with dirty clothes and fast-food wrappers, and began searching for items that could be fit together to look like a human body. Fortunately, I had accumulated a lot of junk during my high-school career. Useless things like water noodles and old Halloween masks sat next to textbooks and school supplies like they were there to serve a purpose. On this occasion, however, they were essential.
That's right. We used an old Halloween mask as the body's head. Then we stuffed some of my dirty laundry with more dirty laundry to create the body. Then, one of us had the genius idea of filling the arms and legs with the water noodles. Why, you ask? In addition to being great substitutes for human appendages, they could float.
Let me remind you that is was raining that day, so the wash near my house was beginning to flood. Once we finished creating our Frankenstein, we put the body in a plastic bag (because that's what you do with bodies, apparently), and toted it to the wash, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible.
When we made it to the wash, we were surprised to find that the rain had already flooded it. Our plan was unfolding quite swimmingly. After a few minutes of debating whether we should follow through, we ended up tossing the body into the wash under a tree where it would be difficult to find. It was the perfect spot, we thought. Surely a jogger or an unsuspecting family would walk up on it, get scared, but then realize it was just a dummy - the perfect afternoon prank.
That didn't happen. In fact, we sat there for a couple of hours and no one came by. Realizing I was going to be late for work, we decided to leave and come back later to check on it. I spent the next 30 to 40 minutes at my house getting ready for work. My mom took me in and I forgot about the whole incident. Besides, it wasn't much of a story at this point.
A few hours went by and my shift ended. Like usual my mom picked me up from work. Only this time she had some news to tell that would throw me into a whirlwind of anxiety. "Hey, kiddo, you're not going to believe what's going on right now. They found a body in the wash by our house."
Immediately, all the day's events came flooding back into my mind, along with images of the consequences that never crossed my mind during my little prank. I froze right there in the passenger side of the car while my mom stared at me, waiting for a response.
"What? No way," I responded, knowing exactly what had happened all along. All I could hope for was that people figured out it was a prank and moved on. That's not what happened.
I looked at my mom with terror in my eyes. "How did you hear about it?"
"It's all over the news. Every channel is covering it."
At that point, I am thinking of all the ways I can get out of this. Maybe my mom is blowing this out of proportion, I thought. She has a tendency to do this.
But, as we drove by the wash, there it was: A rescue crew was stationed on the side of the wash as several news helicopters flew above, trying to get a closer look at the body, which floated amid the dangerous rapids.
Firefighters and EMTs labored side-by-side working to pull the body to shore. Bystanders watched in horror. Police guided traffic. And, I sat frozen in disbelief. How could this have happened?
That night I didn't sleep a wink. Neither did Eric. We made a pact that we wouldn't tell anyone.
At that point, all I could do was pray that everything would blow over. I mean, what's the worst that could happen? Perhaps I'd get a slap on the wrist? Or, worse, fines? Maybe jail time? As the night turned to dawn, I had played out all the scenarios that could happen, and many of them included prison time, fines and the loss of my youth.
I was terrified. As I was getting ready for school that morning, I began sifting through the piles of dirty clothes, looking for something to wear. That's when I realized I couldn't find a certain sweatshirt. A sweatshirt with my name on it. It was yellow and not only had my name on it, but my school's name and the mascot of our football team, which I played on.
"Shit!" I said out loud as I knelt on the floor in the middle of my bedroom. "Please tell me I didn't stuff the body with my high school football shirt."
I did. I might as well have put a sign on the dummy that said "I did it! Here's my name and here's where you can find me."
The entire morning at school went without incident. No police showed up. No FBI. Not even my mom. But, as the day went on, word got out that someone from school pulled the prank that made the news that night.
I didn't say anything to anyone. And, I know Eric wouldn't have either. So, who could've leaked it? Then, one by one, kids began coming up to me, congratulating me on a "job well done."
I played it off but it got to the point that everyone knew I had done it. I was absolutely terrified. My stomach was sick. I couldn't eat lunch. I couldn't pay attention in class. Beads of sweat rolled down my forehead constantly. I was a mess.
Finally, the 3 o'clock bell rang and so far, I was safe. I made my way to the locker room for football practice. I began to put on my uniform when one of my teammates walked up.
"Hey, Fats (my nickname in high school), the police are outside, and they want to talk to you," he said. "Something about last night's incident."
"Why do they want to talk to me?"
"Apparently that 'body' they found last night was stuffed with the shirt of a student who goes by the name of Josh and goes to school here."
I was caught. Not even 24 hours went by and I was going to have to pay for my stupidity. Tears began to well up in my eyes as I inched my way out of the locker room. I turned the corner and walked out of the locker room to see a dozen of my teammates laughing hysterically.
There were not cops or school administrators. Just a bunch of dicks getting a laugh out of my stupid mistake.
Turns out, one of my teammate's dad was the fire chief. His dad asked him if he knew who the kid was, and he said he had a good feeling who it might be.
Thankfully, his dad and the rest of the fire department had only one request: to make sure I got a good scare.
Well, I did.
This could have gone bad in so many ways. Perhaps in today's world, with social media and the constant barrage of news, the consequences would have been much worse.
Either way, I learned my lesson. To this day, I try my best to think twice before making stupid decisions.