America's Youth Gone Wild

The year was 1996 and spring was upon us. The world was alive once again with the sounds of birds chirping and the smell of green grass being mowed. The small town of Franklin, Pa resting deeply in the valley was not ready or prepared for what was about to be unleashed on it.
It was a Friday morning in mid May when I awoke in a bathtub, holding a half empty beer and covered in my own urine. At 17 years of age I had been accustomed to waking up in strange places, losing half the night before from drinking excessively and taking strong drugs. I managed to drag myself out of the tub, chugged my flat beer, and exited the restroom in order to make some kind of sense out of my bewilderment.
James Ryan Edwards, the craziest son of a bitch that I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, was yelling and carrying on about only God knows what. There he was with his bleach blond hair accompanied by his bleach blond eyebrows and that look. Oh God that look of mischief and hatred. I knew instantly that this was not going to be a good morning.
The seniors had their class trip and I being a junior was already a half an hour late for school. James was a senior and it was tradition for all of the kids to go to a diner called Kings before they reported to the school for their field trip. We needed a ride but found it very difficult to convince our fellow students to help us out. We were down to one last car of kids parked in front of the the house where we had crashed that night. We were in luck. They were willing to give us a ride to the diner and to school. I would be somewhat late but I would have a stomach full of breakfast food, hot damn.
Suddenly everything changed dramaticaly when James dropped his pants and started pissing on the vehicle that we were about to board. Our ride sped off leaving us standing on the main road in this town of 10,000 residents. Motorist drove by slowly as my friend held his manhood and screamed at the top of his lungs. We were in trouble and I knew it but there was no turning back. At this point it was sink or swim and I was not going down without some kind of public disturbance that would burn the locals.
A man in a truck came to a complete stop when James walked in front of him with his pants around his ankles. He then jumped onto the hood of the vehicle and planted his ass on the windshield. This was my cue. I ran to the driver side of the truck and pounded on the window screaming, "Get the fuck out of the truck. We need to comandeer it. Get the fuck out of the truck before we kill you." Fortunately for the drivers' sake and ours he remained in his seat with the door locked.
Little did we know that a retired police officer, who lived next door, was calling the cops as this was all going down. This was before the days of cell phones which meant you usually had a better chance of escaping the law. Before I knew it we were surrounded by the boys in blue. Nowhere to go but in the back of the police cruiser. As I sat in the back of the car I watched the cops try to arrest James. He was definitely resisting with his pants still around his ankles and lying face first on the sidewalk with his limbs spread eagle to make it more difficult for the police to pick him up. I couldn't help but laugh hysterically like some kind of demon who knows that good has prevailed.
In the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvanina they have (or had) a rule that 17 year olds can't wait it out in a cell. So there I sat waiting for my mother and listening to James call the cops every name in the book. I couldn't see him but his cell was 12 feet ahead of me and off to my left. All of the sudden a stream of piss was being shot out from his cell like a statue in a fountain. A puddle started to form on the floor right before my eyes. "Clean that up you fucking pigs!", James demanded. And sure enough some poor rookie still wet behind the ears came over with a mop and bucket and cleaned the floor of my dear friend's yellow fluid.
Now if you have never been picked up by your parents at the county jail, let me tell you it is not something that you look forward to. When they arrive they always have that look of being completely and emotionally drained. I am not a parent myself and can't really fathom how it must feel to receive that call.
I sat their full of anxiety when I felt an itch on my head. That was when I discovered that half of my head had been shaved right down the middle. I had hair on my right side and nothing on the left. "What is my mother going to think?", I asked myself. That was when I heard the big steel door buzz, lock release, and open. There my mother stood staring at me with that same old defeated look and tears in her eyes. She wasn't sobbing. Just a subtle cry that would break any son's heart.
James and I both faced the Magistrate. I was sentenced to rehab for 37 days and James received probation. Magistrate Billingsly made it clear that we were savage drunks with no decency or respect for mankind. There may have been some truth to that because I really didn't give a shit about anything back then.

*Now read this story again and think about my head being half shaved.