The other night my friends and I were talking about the crazy things we did when we were younger, and I told them the story of how I had to go to court for disorderly conduct when I was 17 years old.
It was the summer of 1990 and I had just graduated from high school. I was going to University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana in the fall, and was making the most of the last summer with my friends.
As I mentioned in this post, my family went on a two-week vacation every summer on the family boat, but they let me stay home this year with my sister, who was back from college. For the record, it wasn’t the first time they had left me unsupervised. They did this quite often and I always took advantage of it and had ragers. Yes, I was that girl in high school who had parties when her parents went out of town. They always got a little bit out of control, but thankfully nothing bad ever happened. My friends and I were delinquents, but nice delinquents. Likable delinquents. We went to a private Catholic high school and got good grades. The only thing we did was push the limits in search of a good time, but didn’t everybody? Isn’t that a part of being young?
Anyway, this time I didn’t plan a big rager when they went away. I had graduated now and was more mature. I had realized small get-togethers were way more fun than huge parties, which just caused broken windows and anxiety. So on this Saturday in July, I only invited a few friends over, maybe six or seven.
The fun started early because I bought a Slip N Slide for the backyard and we wanted to use it while it was still light outside. We were drinking, of course, because that’s what teenagers did in the 80s and 90s.
After a few hours of this, my friend Dan was lit. He had had way too much to drink and decided it would be hilarious to do the Slip N Slide naked. It was harmless fun and everyone laughed.
And then the neighbor called. Her name was Joyce.
At the time we lived in a cookie-cutter neighborhood with square lots, so you could see into your neighbors’ backyards. Joyce claimed that her 11-year-old daughter just happened to be looking out the window at the exact same time that my friend took off his pants, and she saw his penis.
A little background on my neighbor: She didn’t like me much because, as I mentioned, I had parties when my parents went out of town. She’d always tell on me when my parents came back, and rather than thank her, my mom would basically tell her to get a life. So this lady had had enough of me. Naked Slip N Slide was the final straw.
Joyce said her daughter was traumatized by the sight of my friend’s penis. Yes, a child should never see a penis, but this girl had two older brothers who were my age. She had probably seen a penis before. And my friend wasn’t a 40-year-old man. He was a 17-year-old kid who was naked for like one minute, tops. He did the Slip N Slide, took his pants off, did it again naked, did a little victory dance, and then put his pants back on. Two minutes with your pants off at a party is a long time. Two minutes is weird. It was one minute.
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