I never expected that the sight of Memorial Park could be so sweet. Before I went out that Friday night, I also never expected to trip, stumble, get chased, get poked in the eye, run into a thorn bush, be cursed at, laugh harder than I have ever before in my life, and think that I was going to get a beat down. But then again I never expected to throw a donut at the car of an angry, disgruntled man.

It was another boring Friday night in town, and there was nothing to do. I was with a whole bunch of people. I’m not even exactly sure who was there. I remember a couple of people. I’d say though that there were at least ten of us. We ate at John’s Boy’s Pizzeria and then roamed around town trying to find something to do. We ended up going to CVS and planned on wasting time there. And this is the location at which the ingenious at the time, but not so ingenious anymore plan was conceived.

As we walked around CVS, we ended up stumbling upon a display of cotton balls. That’s when Tevin spat out the foundation of our plan. He suggested that we throw wet cotton balls at cars because it makes a funny “splat” sound. At first when I heard this, I was excited. I admit, it sounded like a fun thing to do. But after thinking it through, my excitement turned to skepticism. My wild side was telling me that it would be a rush and would make the night memorable. My reasonable side was telling me that I was stupid and that it wanted nothing to do with me and my juvenile notions. Well, everyone else agreed with their wild sides so I went along with mine. We ended up buying a couple hundred cotton balls and two gallons of water. This obviously attracted strange looks from the cashier, but we acted as if the connotations of buying cotton balls and two gallons of water were not childish and mischievous, but rather ordinary and standard. As we were paying for our artillery, the lady behind us gave us all an ill-advised look. We could have either recognized it and come to our senses, or we could have simply looked over it. Needless to say, we picked the latter, and phase two of our plan was about to come together.

We started walking through town on the boring Friday night just like before. Except this time, we had a purpose. And the night didn’t seem so boring anymore. We excitedly talked about what was about to happen. We contemplated throwing some cotton balls at a group of freshmen that we saw on the corner, but we resisted. As we reached Dunkin Donuts, Jack Arpert contributed to the plan. He ran inside, bought a box of a dozen donuts and rejoined our group to the sound of “you’re a genius.” He said he made sure that he mostly got jelly and cream filled donuts. I think you can see where this is going. We cut through the police station and ended up on the corner of Glen Avenue. We decided to “ding-dong-ditch” the house of a student, whom I will not name. I am never the one to ring the doorbell. I prefer to be the first one who gets away. I watched as two of my friends crossed the street and rang the bell. One of them even smeared a Boston Cream against the door for good measure. Now, don’t think that I’m a horrible person because I’m not. This syndrome is just the result of a boring Friday night and is common among teenage boys. It’s nothing but a little bit of harmless fun.
So naturally everyone started to run after we rang the doorbell. As we were sprinting away, we hear a loud slip followed by a louder landing, which was followed by even louder cursing. I turned around and saw that one of our fellow comrades had fallen. It was Jack, and he was on the ground very apparently in pain yet he was doing something very brave. He was sacrificing his body to the common good. You see, in his moment of clumsiness, he fell on the side of his arm scraping it up along with his elbow yet holding that box of donuts in the air with his life. There was no way he was going to let those key elements of our plan get crushed. We, however, did not have that much sympathy for him and exploded in laughter. He was left sitting there alone looking very foolish. After the initial reaction, our human sides came back, and we rushed towards him to see if he was okay and more importantly to see if the donuts were crushed. Just kidding. As we surrounded him, we saw that his whole arm was engulfed in red. We got pretty serious for a moment, but he said he was fine and he cleaned himself up with a couple of the cotton balls and some water.
Pushing that little anecdote to the side, let me get to the good part of the story, the part that deals with carrying out our plan. After Jack’s incident, we were all pretty relaxed, except maybe Jack. Most of our nerves were washed away with laughter, and we were all ready to start throwing. We started to walk down Glen Avenue, and we decided that we would target the next car that came down the street. Looking back, it was a picture perfect night. The stars were out, the moon was full, and it was sweatshirt and shorts weather. In my right hand, there was a nice jelly-filled donut and in my left were three wet cotton balls. We were about a quarter of the way down the street when we spotted it. It was a white Isuzu SUV, and it had just unsuspectingly turned the corner and was coming towards us. Little did it know that we were armed and ready. My friends started to walk quicker and I fell a little bit behind the pack. As the car got closer and closer to us, it started to slow down sensing that there was something wrong. When it was about fifteen feet away from us, someone opened fire. I’m not sure who it was, but a moment later I remember hearing a loud and distinct “splat”. It was like the shot heard ‘round the world. Everyone paused, and then all hell broke loose as our whole arsenal was flung at the car. As I started to join in on the fun, I saw the one flaw in our plan come to life. The man did not speed up and drive away as expected. Instead, he screeched his brakes, and as my jelly donut left my hand, his car door simultaneously opened. I think he set the record for the fastest exit from a car ever. There could not have been more than eight seconds between that first splat and the hurling of my donut. As he jumped out of his car, he had a flashlight in his hand and about twenty different curses in his mouth. He immediately started to charge at us and we were shocked, no just completely astonished by this radical turn of events.
Adrenaline and instincts took over all of us, and we all darted in about four different directions. My mind was drawing a complete blank, and I just followed whoever was in front of me. It happened to be Greg Andrake, and I swear that God was with him that night. There was another kid right in front of me and we hurried after Greg. He randomly took a turn into a backyard and then into the patch of woods between Glen Avenue and Memorial Park. I know this sounds extreme, but I swear that the guy was following me. I thought that this was it and that my face would never look the same again. As we entered the patch of woods I’d say that he was only about ten feet behind me. The woods are called the woods for a reason, and I experienced it first hand that night. There were all sorts of branches, thorn bushes, loose logs, and moist, slippery leaves cluttered all around. As you all are expecting, I tripped, I stumbled, got hassled by a thorn bush and got my eye poked by a branch. As the three of us struggled our way through the brush, the woods all of a sudden ended and were met by the railroad tracks. Beyond the tracks was the sweet sight of safety. I remember asking Greg later that night how he got us to Memorial. He just said that he started to run and that’s where we ended up. By this time, I stopped hearing footsteps behind me and the guy had moved onto another group. We quickly ran across the tracks and into Memorial right behind the tennis courts. We all collapsed on the grass, relieved, yet panting for air, staring up into the picture perfect night sky.