2-Ply Quilted Vengeance

Yet another story from my childhood. Enjoy!

Waaaay back when I was in 7th grade, my best friend lived in a fairly rural part of Riverside County. Unfortunately, so did a bunch of girls from our class. Now, one might think that having cute girls living nearby would be a plus in the eyes of two adolescent boys. One would be wrong, for these girls were of the annoying, pesky variety. And when annoying, pesky girls get together, trouble cannot be far behind. This was proven to be true when my friend came to school one day & told me that his parents had been TP'd by this same group of annoying, pesky girls. And, boy, did they do a number on his house.

The next time I stayed at his house, his parents charged us with the task of reaping vengeance against one of the offenders houses. Yes, we were actually encouraged to vandalize someone's home. A dream come true, yes?

Well, yes & no.

We were given black hooded sweatshirts to blend in with the night & armed with many rolls of quilted comeuppance. Knowing that the honor of the family was on the line, we hopped the back fence with a sense of pride, avenging my friend's father & the humiliation that had been wrought upon his castle &, probably more importantly, his new Mustang.

Our target was about a quarter mile away up one of the many hilly streets in the area. Excitement & adrenaline made our hearts pound with anticipation (or maybe it was just, in my case, my heart ready to explode from having ran up the hill to the girls house). We each pulled out a 2-ply, 400 sheet count grenade & cocked our arms back, ready to rain down angel soft retaliation on the offender's home.

We got exactly one roll tossed halfway into a tree when we noticed headlights making their way up the street. Panicking, we rounded up the toilet paper & hid next to a dividing wall, on the neighbor's side, which was, to our benefit, covered with iceplant.

Then things started turning against us. For you see, the headlights belonged not to the girl's parent's car, nor even to someone further up the street. No, the car that the headlights were eminating from belonged to their neighbor - the one whose iceplant we were cowering in. They pulled in to their driveway & opened the garagedoor, which flooded the previously dark yard in bright light. In addition to lighting up the whole area, the opening of the garage also released their dog.

Their big dog.

My friend & I froze, daring not even to breathe, for fear that the dog would smell the fear on our breath. To make things even worse, the people started to remove groceries from the car - outside the garage instead of pulling in. And they must've not been shopping for months, as it took what seemed like forever for them to unload the car. Many, many times we thougt the dog noticed us & were ready to run as far & as fast as we could before a) our hearts shot out of our chests or b) the dog took us down & ate us.

Just when I was sure the the pounding of my heart was going to alert the dog to our presence, the people pulled the car into to garage, called in Fido & closed the door. We stayed in the iceplant until the outside light went off & we were certain that the dog & the people, probably armed with a 12-guage, weren't coming back out. Finally summoning up the courage, we quietly climbed out back over the wall, readied another volley of flower printed vidictiveness. It was at this time that we heard a door open & someone pop out, calling for their cat.

That was it. The mission was aborted & we ran back to base, tails between our legs, having failed to restore the honor of my friend's family name.

As we were running, another car passed us going the opposite way. We stopped long enough to see the car park in front of the girl's house & her parents get out to inspect the whole one roll of toilet paper strung halfway up the tree.

Yeah. We showed 'em.