It's 9AM
They put a Pac Man Machine by the door the TG&Y.
It was 1980 something and a few months before the fever hit.
Pac Man fever, if you know what I’m talking about.
I try to explain it to #10 and he just looks at me.
He’s never had to go to a store to play a video game.
Hell, he’s got a VR headset his mom got him for Christmas from Santa that makes me feel like I’m standing in the middle of somewhere else when I put it on.
I bet I could hack it and program it to show the inside of a TG&Y with a Pac Man game to play.
What I couldn’t get though, is Chris Hollis teaching twelve year old me how to use your knee to bang/nudge the slot when you drop a quarter in to get it to add more credits.
Woka woka.
Hollis was one year older than me, but held back a grade or two.
One for smarts, or lack thereof.
One for delinquency, a trait he had in abundance.
First abandoned building adventure?
Led by him.
He idolized Dillinger and Clyde and wanted us to start a gang.
First time across the city on bikes?
His suggestion.
He wanted to meet a girl at a pool across town and we road backroads and byways to get there.
Even through the “Bad” part of town.
That’s what he called it.
My brother and I didn’t tell him that’s where we lived before we moved next to him.
We got grounded for that ride.
Grounded for getting in a rock fight with some other kids who busted a windshield trying to hit us.
Every time we got grounded, it was usually because ol’ Chris had the helm.
My step-dad hated him.
Hated us hanging out with him, or so he said.
Secretly, I think he liked us getting into trouble.
It gave him an excuse to give out punishment, and though he did not take to parenting well or often, he adopted the discipline side of it with great relish.
He’s the reason I spared the rod on my kids.
I got enough rod to last three lifetimes.
My brother was younger and smaller, and I usually sniffled up an offer to take his discipline as well, when it was called for.
But that didn’t stop us from hanging with our bad influence friend.
Until he suggested taking the Pac Man machine from the store.
His older brother dreamed up the scheme, and they laid out the plan.
We were supposed to be the distraction, us three pre-teen kids while the eighteen year old and his buddy wheeled the game out on a dolly and flopped it into the back of a truck.
I pulled my kid brother out of that conclave and said we weren’t going to do it.
The older brother punched and pummeled a promise to keep my mouth shut out of me, and watching that was enough to keep the other two quiet.
When we got home, I got a punishment again for fighting.
They got caught.
The older brother and his buddy.
But our bad influence was hanging out with us instead of them.
Turns out, maybe we had a calming influence on him or watching his older brother beat up his friends just turned him off the idea.
The dropped the game out of the truck and broke it when the cop showed up.
TG&Y replaced it with the love of my young life.
A lady I would spend hours and hours with, because unlike the man who came before her, she responded to my knee nudges with lots of freebies.
Ms. Pac Man.
What’s your biggest act of juvenile delinquency?
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