The Perils of youth and hanging out with older friends

After the fire and Craig and his family moved away, I started to hang out with a boy that lived across the street.  His family and my family were friends.  My brothers were friends with their daughter.  Tim, the young guy across the street, was probably about 4-5 years older than I was.  When we began hanging out, he was I think, in 6th or 7th grade so her was definitely older.   As I reflect back, I believe that Tim was not necessarily a bad kid, but he was adventurous and daring.  One of our goals was to always build or make forts.  We were always either taking with permission or actually kind of stealing the boxes from the knitting mill down the street.  Tim’s philosophy was that they had more boxes than they needed so they would not miss one or two.  As Tim was older, he had begun to smoke.  Little did he know I had too, so when we were together smoking was always something we did. 

Bottom line here is that when I started to hang out with Tim we frequently found ourselves in places that we should not be, doing things we should not be doing.  One of Tim’s favorite devices was fire.  Because of smoking we always had a lighter or matches making playing with fire a lot easier.  Most of the places we were playing in were not very safe to be making fires.  The buildings or structures were usually dried out making a fire quite easy.  

I recall he and I sneaking into the empty store next to his house and across the street from mine.  We climbed in an open window from his backyard and snuck around.  Tim and I also had candles and matches so we could make light in our new fort.  We settled in these little square type boxes stacked on top of each other.  Those became our respective "homes" within the store.  We set up candles in there so we had light.  I think we did this for about 2 - 3 days before my mother caught on.  At dinner THE NIGHT, mom began asking all these questions about what Tim and I had been doing and where we were going.  She mentioned that she had looked for me several times and could not find me.   I've never been good under pressure and I sing like the proverbial canary. I told my mother everything.  Suffice to say that she was more than just angry.  I understood why she was concerned because the building was old and dirty and really could have gone up in flames pretty easily.  The message I heard was not of concern, but of real anger.  Thankfully mom was never real big on grounding because she was then stuck with me.  I was hoping that maybe a stern talking to would cover my punishment.  

 Not only was I grounded for two weeks, but I was also forbidden to see Tim for two weeks.  And as if that weren't enough, she told Tim's mom what was going on and he got into trouble too.  It was a two-fer.  I guess when I was in elementary school I did normal things.  I was a bit of a hellion - I did a lot of things kids did not do until they were in Jr. High.  By the time I hit Jr. High, I had done a lot of stuff I probably should not have.  It was around this time that I began trying to be "The Best Little Boy."  Not sure how well that worked, at least in the beginning, but I believe by my senior year, I had really calmed down and began to focus on my future.