With A Little Help With My Friends.

Devin Rhodes

English 050

August, 31^th, 2014.

 

Narrative Essay

            An experience that I have had that has a lot of meaning to me: when my friends Aaron, Shawn, and I decided to take back a skateboard and bike that had been stolen from Aaron. This was one of the most idiotic ideas that we could have ever pondered on ever doing, but at the time it was the greatest idea we had. It all started when I went over to my friend, Aaron’s house. I had packed my bag for school a change of clothes. It was Friday; there was not too much going on at school so that I had room in my bag to do so.  I arrived to his house around 3:30 in the afternoon, shortly after school. When I walked in I saw Shawn sitting on the hairy old purple love seat. He was playing a game on the Xbox, and stopped to pause it when I stepped into the living room.

            After the exchanges of “Hello’s, and what’s hanging?” Aaron led Shawn and I down the stairs to the basement. It was dark and cold down there; it was like a total tempter change from upstairs. My eyes took forever trying to adjust to the dark. Before they did I stepped on a couple of unknown object as we crept up to the door. As the doorknob turned, a sudden burst of light glistened from the crack of the opening door. I walked through the door way last, with Shawn in front of me. The TV was blaring with a movie playing on it. Aaron grabbed the remote and turned down the TV until it was as low as a whisper and sat down on his bed. At first we talked about the latest girls in school, what teacher we thought were cool and others that he thought shitty. Shawn changed the subject and brought up a new skateboard video that he got last time he went to the Springfield Skate Park. He had forgotten it at home, but proceeded to explain it to us.

            After that long and expansive story that I rather would have watched came to an end, Shawn had the idea to go skateboard outside. Shawn had brought his skateboard with him while mine was already there, since I left it last time I visited. Aaron then mentioned that he had gotten his stolen, along with his favorite bike by a neighborhood kid up the street a little ways. Shawn became kind of got irate about it, and said to Aaron, “That’s not right man; we should go and get them back!” Aaron looked at me with bewilderment and hesitation in his face, and I am sure that the expression on my face displayed the same. I spoke up and said, “Sure, why not? We would just have to be fast. In and out, that’s all”. As we all remained seated were we were we started to form a plan on how we were going to pull this off without getting caught and plan it so fast that body would be seen, or heard.

            Then we steadily and swiftly snuck past Aaron’s parents’ bedroom, then we ran to the back door and went onto the back patio. We got in to position so that we could put our plan in action. Aaron was going to lead the way yet again. The plan was Shawn and Aaron would get in the garage or backyard of the house and look for Aaron’s stolen property. And my objective was to look out and keep my eye peeled for anything unusual or inharmonious. After a five minute walk we finally reached the house. I stayed at the curb of the street on the side of the house so that I could not be seen. The house was an older white house with faded green moss or grass stains all over. The front porch was antediluvian and falling apart. It looked as if I could go and blow on it, and it would clasp breaking into a thousand pieces. The shutters on the windows hung in the wind and swayed back and forth. Windows were covered with newspapers and blankets; trapping any light that tried to escape from the cracks from inside the home.

            Suddenly Aaron and Shawn dashed from the garage racing to the street. Aaron had a skateboard in his hands, and when I looked up to see his face his mouth wording something I couldn’t make out. Sound finally hit my ears, he was yelling, “Run! Run!” My mind did not yet register what was going on at first, and then it hit me. My body spun around and my legs began to move forward. I didn’t take one look behind me; I continued to sprint down the road. When I got to the corner of the road I dove into a big bush. I climbed inside of the bush and put my fingers through the other side so that I could see what was happening in front of me. I didn’t see Aaron or Shawn. “Shit”, I thought. “They caught them and now I’m going to have to confess to my mom what I was doing, why we were doing it, and how much of a stupid idea that it was for us to have done”.

Then in front of my eyes, the car stopped at the stop sign. A man with rage in his face sat in the driver’s seat with his enormous hands strangling the steering wheel. His face was as red as the ripest tomato. Cuts and scars covered his face as well. He sped forward looking intently up and down the road across from window to window until he was a block or two up the street. I climbed back out of the bush and laid on my back with my feet still in the bush. I tried to calm myself and tried to stop my heart from racing any more than it was. When I finally got up it was with slow steady movements. I poked my head over the vegetative plant and onward toward Aaron’s house that I could see in the near distance. I took a minute to find the strength and courage to charge to the house. I got on my feet and bolted toward the familiar homestead. Halfway to the house I closed my eyes and pictured my friend getting handcuffed and put in the back of a police. Then I opened my eyes and seen I was approaching the back yard.

 Finally I took my final steps into backyard where I was relieved to see both of my companies hunched over trying to catch their breath. I looked at them with a wide grin on my face and I told them that we are never doing that again. We all agreed, following one another back into Aaron’s house were we proceeded to play Xbox all night and forgetting the trouble we had put upon ourselves. I learned from that experience that, one, stealing is wrong and dangerous, and two, that there is always room for another idea and/or opinion to be suggested along with what may sound like a good idea is not always the best idea.