A nationally chartered high school club was counting the money they had raised to pay for the paint the boys were supposed to use to beautify the school by touching up the railings and such around the campus. That's what the adults in charge were told anyway.
The club’s big fund raiser every year was selling Halloween insurance. The policy protected the buyer from the trick part of, “Trick or treat.” For instance, if a protected house got rolled by toilet paper wielding pranksters, the members of the club would clean it up.
The cross town rival high school also had a club selling “roll” insurance. It sold itself really because in our little town rolling houses was done every Halloween by the high spirited kids. It was a protection racket. Pay up or we rolled your house with toilet paper, burned your yard by cutting donuts in the lawn with a truck on off-road tires and either smashed your mailbox with a baseball bat or ran it over as we made our get away.
The clubs from the opposing high schools would split into teams, one team to protect the neighborhoods where the policies were sold, and the other team to go roll the houses covered by our counterparts from the rival high school as well as a few houses in our own territory to serve as an example to those who didn't buy our insurance. Needless to say it was a moneymaking enterprise for the clubs.
The club would then throw a big party for themselves using the proceeds from our harmless community extortion. This particular year it was a keg party at Fort Wilderness, the Disney World campground.
The club had two types of partiers; the drinkers and the more adventurous types.
On this particular excursion the partiers invaded the River Country waterpark in the middle of the night and had fun wreaking havoc and setting off alarms. The drinkers were content to play in the park, helping themselves to the inner tubes to float down the rapids. They were easily apprehended by the Disney authorities.
The more adventurous types, who were tripping on Space Coast mushrooms, found the little, two seater rental boats fueled and ready to go for the upcoming mornings tourists. It only took one pull to start the little two stroke engines. Disney really kept their machines in good working order.
Doing tight, fast circles really enhanced the tracers from all the lights as the mushrooms really kicked in. After zipping around the little lagoon the shroomers wound up on Tom Sawyer’s Island exploring the caves while security was busy wrangling the drunkards up in the waterpark.
Being on shrooms it was easy for the kids to see in the dark and by the time the security guards showed up, they could only hear the echoes of the silliness as the boys laughed their way through the caves unaware of their pursuers.
The boys sparked up a joint in the cave and thought they heard voices. “Ahh, you're just being paranoid,” said one of them. “No, for real, man.”
“Shush. Listen.”
The shuffling footsteps and jingling of a ring of keys were getting closer. The flicker of a flashlight on the wall. The light darted around as if someone were lost or looking for something.
One of the kids let out a low, ghost like moan. The footsteps stopped, the flashlight beam jerked around suddenly and with a metal dropped on the cement racket reverberating throughout the cave, the light went out. Then the noises of somebody running...
“OOFF!,” it sounded like someone had been punched in the gut. The scared officer had run into one of the crotch level, faux stalagmites in his panic to escape the dark, scary cave after dropping his brain beater flashlight.
It's easy to get lost in those caves especially at night. Unless you're on hallucinogenics and your pupils are the same size of your eyes…
It wasn’t long before he returned with reinforcements. They would make sweep after sweep, searching for the trespassers whom they could hear but couldn’t locate. After the security guys passed by the kids' location, the kids would scramble to another one.
Again, the security people could hear the commotion but couldn't see anything in the dark cave even with their powerful, 5000 candle power flashlights. They would holler out warnings to give up, "We've got you surrounded. There is no way out," and then listen to see if they could locate us.
They passed by yet again, but this time one of the boys cut a loud, wet ripper of a fart. “Ah man! I think I drew mud,” echoed through the cave sending everybody into hysterical laughter. Even the pissed off security guards were laughing at that one.
Did you know there is an underground part to Disney World called the utilidor? Just like their engineers are called imagineers, hence utilidor is a utility corridor…You’ll find out if you ever get arrested by the Disney police. Technically it's not underground, it's the first floor. Disney is just built on top of it because you can't have a basement in Florida because of the water table.
The lights came on in the cave and two squads of armed officers entered the tunnels at opposite ends and tried to trap our fun seekers in the middle.
The boys were able to out maneuver the bumbling pursuers and escaped the cave with security lagging woefully behind. The youthful trippers easily out ran the overweight staff as they huffed and puffed their breathless commands to, “FREEZE! Right now goddamn it! Come back here you little fuckers!”
The boys made faces at the Disney SWAT team as they zipped by in the little motorboats making their escape from the island. The sweat glistened off the faces of the tired men with their hands on their hips, sucking for air as they watched their quarry disappear into the night.
By the time the boys returned the rental boats to where they found them, the other fellas had been rounded up. The Disney cops were waiting, hiding, staking out the kid’s campsite. When the trippers returned, the less than amused officers sprang into action and took the boys to their lair under the Magic Kingdom.
Mug shots were taken, trespass orders handed out, parents or guardians were called as well as the principal of the school along with the club’s teacher sponsor who was supposed to have been chaperoning the club sponsored event. He probably didn't get his bonus for the extra babysitting duties of a school club sponsor.
The drinking age was 18 so they didn't make too big of a deal over the keg back then. They were way more concerned about the marijuana that had long been smoked. The age old lecture about the future, permanent records and the importance of college went in one ear and out the other as usual.
The school administrators were smart enough not to suspend us because they knew most of us would just go to the beach anyway. We ended up painting the railings and such during in-school suspension. There were a few guys that took life too seriously and believed in the whole educational collegiate system way of doing things. Those guys always wasted time being worried for nothing.
They still got to go to college and most of them are still condemned to spend their lives working until they die. For me the whole point to life is to just enjoy every opportunity to have fun. There's plenty of time for unwanted, uninvited misery but never enough time for fun seeking on this planet. Like mom always said, "If you can't have fun, don't go!" ☮️❤️😁🎶👣🖖
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