Calling all Spring Chickens

I am thirty today. Brandie is already thirty. Tone is thirty on the 29th. I don't remember any others. Sorry.

But here we are. This is that milestone that we've been waiting for, dreading--whatever. It's here and there's precious little to be done about it. It's easy to get caught up in "what might have been." Goals not reached. Money not earned. But let's, instead, take some time to remember what we did do. What we accidentally achieved. And the money we never earned (Moose excepted).

ONCE, we filled a toilet with gasoline and added fire to it in the rose garden at Timpview. When they talk of a 'Pillar of Fire' in the scriptures, that is what I see in my mind. The blaze that night was as beautiful a thing as I will ever see.

ONCE, we went around beating discarded Christmas trees by the curb with baseball bats that we had given girls' names. My bat was Barbara.

ONCE, we got caught by the police bizzing on the back of Moose's mighty automobile. The police happened to be Winston Hill's dad, who was not so angry at us for breaking the law as he was disappointed in Moose, who apparently had the brightest future among us. There was little Holmes and I could do to even get the man's attention.

SEVERAL TIMES, we urinated off the bridge on Carteville Road that spans University Parkway onto passing cars below. I liked to think they could see us up there, releasing our filthy streams that were beyond their powers to avoid.

ONCE, Mikey dove head-first into a plastic cup to the everlasting delight of hundreds of screaming adolescents and a handful of terrified adults. The liability was staggering.

ONCE, Moose and I wound up together at a dance after discovering that we had been mutually and zealously ignored by our dates. We passed the evening making flatulent noises and punching each other in the arms.

ONCE, I almost got suspended for writing a "caustic" rough draft of the Spring horoscopes for The Provonian. There was some vulgar stuff in there, I'll admit it. But it was a rough draft. It made it all the way to the desk of Patty Harrington.

ONCE, Mat almost got suspended for something I said to the whole school during the morning announcements. It wasn't as vulgar as Mr. Ray thought it was.

ONCE, Gorgoth played at the senior assembly and all the jocks started puking blood.

ONCE, we hooked up with BYUSA (so we didn't have to become a club) and put up a rogue comedy show in the varsity theater. Benson and Sanders didn't know that rooming with Homles and Duerden would mean singing and dancing in front of hoards of strangers.

ONCE, Tony murdered a lady. No he didn't.

ONE YEAR, the unity of the whole band was almost dissolved when we invited Dave Stevens to play suit football. There were many others to blame that day for the dissension, but it's easier to blame Stevens (who was never invited back). Sorry, Dave.

ONCE, we got really drunk on vanilla Coke and did the Belgian* up the hill by the Lookout Point Apartments. *The practice of getting totally naked, inserting a lengthy sheet of toilet paper between your... cheeks, lighting the end of said toilet paper on fire, and running like the dickens.

A FEW TIMES, we took our pants down in key places: tardy make-up, the movie theater, Abravanel Hall.

ONCE, Tony wrote a hit play and sold it out for 4 weeks at BYU.

ONE NIGHT, we tried to make a molotav cocktail and throw it at Timpview, but we used motor oil in the "oily rag" and it wouldn't light. And when we doused the rag in gasoline and it finally lit, I was so alarmed I lobbed it a few feet in front of me where it broke and burned on the asphalt of the parking lot.

OUR WHOLE SENIOR YEAR, we ruled at Provo High. Pamrose was the Student Body President, but Mat was the class president and we owned the rest of the Student Government and the Newspaper. Then we had Moose in the athletics, Holmes had a handle on academia, and Tone, Mikey and I had control of the entertainment. Remember how we had Funk Week, threw a Funk Stomp and used a line from a Maceo Parker song as the year's theme? Pamrose, this.


I know there are more events worth noting, but these fill me the pride I need to ignore my other more glaring short-comings. I think it's okay to be 30 when you have a past like ours. And how nice, that we're all still alive and not in prison.