Youth In Revolt: My First Run In With The Law.....

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I was looking through pictures again, this time i came across pictures of me with some old friends, and of course a memory came running back..... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's an autumn day, the leaves are a beautiful array of orange, red and yellow. School is about to begin again, I'm running into a pile of leaves in the neighbor's yard, she likely just raked them all up an hour before. I throw them in the air, and dance among the falling colors of red, yellow and orange. I laugh loudly and smile wildly, my neighbor friend who was a little more reserved in his joy, tags me on the arm, we're off and running in a chase of cat and mouse, I go to tag him – but he yells out “Donald Duck” and plops to the ground, we never played the normal game of tag instead we always played Cartoon Tag. Which basically is before you are tagged you have to say the name of a cartoon character and sit down. One of my best friends during my childhood years was my neighbor Sean, (whom also was my first crush), I was also friends with his sister Kayla, She would often join us in whatever we decided to do for the day. Whether it be riding our bikes alongside the road collecting pop cans, or meeting up with my friends Zach and his sister Ellen. On one Autumn day, I can remember us getting into quite some mischief. It was the five of us we rode our bikes collected cans at the park, and school and made our way to Jim's Supermarket, the only store in our small town of Banks, Oregon. We rode along the small town driving over the leaves, and in mud puddles, laughing away. This was around the time the new development behind Jim's Supermarket was being built, we had yet to venture down that way but we decided go and drive around there for the first time. During our little off course travels, we rode upon a tractor sitting there alone. For a couple of kids in a small town, a tractor left alone was quite the site. We climbed up on the tractor pretended to drive, we found a keychain and decided to keep it, I pulled up some signs and threw them in the grass. Not really sure why, as I was about as far from a rebel or a vandal as there was. I think eventually me, Sean, & Kayla decided to head back, throwing signs, and taking a keychain was about the limit for are vandalism, but Zach and Ellen remained. As we rode along our usual way home, we heard a siren not thinking a thing of it, we kept on bicycling along, until the siren came to a stop, and a patrol car pulled over beside us. My heart sang, I pulled out the keychain from my pocket and immediately began crying, as did Kayla. The officer allowed us to ride home but wanted to speak to our parents. I think they may have asked us if any other kids were involved in the vandalism, but even then I wasn't a rat. I think later Sean or Kayla told the officers the truth as i remember hearing later Zach and Ellen got into trouble too. I remember my mom being very angry and upset at me but my punishment was minimal. Sean and Kayla, however, had very strict parents and I believe they banned them from ever seeing Zach or Ellen again, I think they realized I was innocent to as I still saw them all the time. We later found out from what the police told our parents all that happened, apparently water was poured into the gas tank, and the lid on the gas tank was missing. This would be my last day as a Youth in Revolt, back to Cartoon tag we went!!! Photo is of me and my friend Zach from about the time this happened.