Day 147--- Neighborhood's Most Wanted...

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As promised by me, and therefore anticipated by you today is the day that I am to reveal one of my deepest childhood memories. After countless hours spent scouring the archives of my mind I have found the story best suited to share. I've sifted through hundreds of class clowning tales and potentially embarrassing moments, but I have decided to go with a story that better showcases my years on the darkside...

Years ago when I was but a boy being formally introduced to the splendors of puberty I led a double life. Not one of the admirable double lives lived by an agent or an undercover officer, but the life of a hardened gangster. Yes, you read correctly, I was a regular old Ryan Dillinger. Go ahead and laugh it up, but what you obviously don't realize is that life was hard in Cedar Park, Texas (a suburb of Austin) for a brotha like myself. (Brotha = 12 year old, straight A's, Christian home, white boy. And not like Eminem white boy, more like Charlie Brown white boy)... In reality the most gangsta thing I had been involved in up to this point was wearing a gold cross necklace and occasionally (when my dad was absent) flipping my hat backwards.

Looking back I am truly unaware of the initial inspiration that caused Aaron, Jeremy, and I to form our little clan; maybe it was out of sheer boredom, you can only play a certain amount of hide and seek, front yard football, and video games before you crack you know. Perhaps one of us had recently watched Reservoir Dogs, or it may have even been the countless hours of Coolio and Bone Thugs N Harmony that we had flooded onto mix tapes. All I know for sure is that I was now in the "Wood Ridge Posse", and that meant that I was part of something.

Truth be told we were about as hard as the Little Rascals, I may have even put money on them over us in a street fight, but at least we had a very thoughtful name... Most kids our age would have gone with the obvious "gang" ending but we must have done some thesaurus work in order to sound a bit more intelligent. For the first part we were going to go with the name of the street we lived on, but were worried that would lead the authorities straight to us. We wanted to be a bit more evasive, so we settled on Wood Ridge, which was a street name almost two blocks away... Tricky, I know... You can tell by the extreme ghetto twang to the street name that we lived in quite the rough area. (Rough area = Safest neighborhood in town short of having a gate.)

Once we had voted on the name we were pretty much set, there were no other kids our age, so we never got around to initiations. In fact, since there were no other kids our age we didn't even get to have any rival gang fights. For a while it seemed as though nothing had really changed, we had a new fancy name for ourselves, but that really made us more like musketeers, than gang bangers, but one day that all changed. Aaron (the older one, so technically the leader, but more so in brawn than brains) had discovered a priceless little gem called chromies, well, to you they are tire valve covers, but to us they were chromies. Apparently all the great gangs of the world had gotten their feet wet in the underworld by stealing these little guys off of peoples cars. Apparently I would also believe anything people told me at that age. Now, I normally was not a follower, I colored out side of lines, I peed sitting down, and I mixed Mountain Dew and Dr. Pepper, all the things that James Dean would have done. But since I had formed a pact and pledged my life to my new brotherhood, I decided that I too would have to steal said chromies...

We started off small time hitting up our cul-de-sac first, we didn't want to really branch out until we had the hang of things, you know righty-tighty, lefty-loosey... We had quite the system worked out, one of us would go unscrew, while the other two would stand as lookouts... OK, the system wasn't really that intricate, but boy did it work, we could have had our own mini-series.... "Ocean's 3"... Can you see it???

Once we got really brave we liked to post up at the Model Home around the corner... It was the perfect arena for our little heists... The model boasted a large yard with a playground adjacent to the parking lot, it wasn't the busiest spot on earth, but we worked with it. We would be playing football and "accidentally" land the ball near the cars... Once again using a similar system in regards to the whole lookout situation... This parking lot became our Bellagio... Tens of unsuspecting car owners went home with a little less chrome, and a little less air when they left our turf...

We were moving up in the world, pulling off jobs nearly everyday after school and homework... We would divvy our our loot amongst us and take it our separate ways... I have no idea what the others did with their chromies, but I hid mine inside a little Yahtzee travel case that I'd had for years. The parents would never look there... As far as being found out, not a chance, we had perfected our work, the neighborhood had no idea what had hit them. Literally, I guarantee you they didn't even realize they had been hit. There was no way that we were ever going to be found out... Until one day...

One day when my mother and I were headed home from school, she looked over at me and said, "Ryan I am so proud of you and the young man you are becoming, you're doing so well in school, and you've been really well behaved lately...". (Not common for me at that age)

She didn't get much further before I folded like a beach chair with Oprah in it, "No, No I'm not mom," crying by this point " I am not as good as you think, I've actually been really bad recently..." And then explained the past few months...

By the time I was done with my explanation, needless to say she was a little less proud than she was before... She has never admitted to me, but I imaging she must have thought it was a bit funny as well... I mean here I am thinking I'm the next Al Capone when in reality I am just stealing upgraded valve covers, .$25 cent plastic substitutions. Oh to be a kid again...

When we got home she called Aaron and Jeremy's parents, our punishment was to take back the ones we could remember where they came from... I only vividly remember one house, the dude had an Acura NSX, so the chromies had a specific little design on them. When we got to his door and explained what we had done, I think the guy did everything he could to keep from laughing at us... But, we learned our lesson, well, at least I did. I can proudly tell you that I have been gang free for the past 13 years. After the humiliation of returning those chromies I suddenly lost the desire to steal...

You may ask what we planned to do with the chromies had we continued collecting them, and to that I say, I have no clue, just feel fortunate that you did not park your car in my neighborhood...

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