Illegal Foreign Object

In 1995, Saint Patrick’s Day fell on a Friday. After school, a few of my closest friends linked up with me at my house, where we laid out our game plan for the night. My dad was back in the States, which meant I had the use of his van. When it got sufficiently dark outside, we piled into the minivan and headed out, stopping by the grocery store to jack three dozen eggs and then the hardware store for cans of spray paint.

Driving around, we egged the houses of some of the rich kids at our school — the ones who went out of their way to remind everyone how much money their families had, but the best egging occurred atop a hill about 50 meters up from a basketball court. Watching those guys scatter while a torrential downpour of eggs rained upon them. Good grief, we were assholes.

We rode through Rohrmoser blasting House of Pain’s Same As It Ever Was. Initially, I had designs on tagging the gate in front of my school headmaster’s house, but that got squashed when we drove by to find him sitting out front, enjoying his evening. Instead, we took a left and went down a hill, where we spotted a giant white wall on an empty lot. We hopped out, tagged it, and then saw the flashing lights of a police van pull up from the opposite direction alongside my van. We tossed the cans and walked towards my van. The police van was so close to mine that I barely had room to get the driver’s side door open enough to squeeze through. The cop told me not to start the van — that he saw what we were doing, would be impounding the vehicle, and taking us in for tagging, I said the tags were already there and that we were taking a piss. He repeated his threat, and I heard someone in the backseat whisper, “Just go, dude,” so I hit the gas and took off (as much as a minivan can take off).

We weaved through several back streets, hopped on the freeway to Escazú (while shooting by a lit-up cop car going the other direction towards where we’d just left), and hid the van behind two low-hanging trees in a parking lot. Then, we went and did what any seventeen-year-old delinquent faced with the possibility of cop trouble in a foreign country would do: we went to the movie theater across the street and watched Pulp Fiction.

Then, my friend Niall and I drove back to my apartment, tagged the basketball court behind the building with HOW MANY MEGATONS?! beneath a massive mushroom cloud, had a few drinks, and crashed.

Several months later, I was at a girl’s house with friends. We were enjoying Shawshank Redemption when her phone rang. It was my dad, which I thought was strange since he didn’t know I was there, nor did he have the phone number. “When are you coming home,” he asked in a tone that neither registered as happy nor pissed. I told him I’d be home after the film, hung up, and then he called back a minute later. “I think you need to come home now.”

I spent the entire ride home reviewing everything I’d done the previous few weeks — I came up with nothing. When I walked into our apartment, Dad was sitting at the round dining room table to the left of the front door. “Do you have anything to tell me,” he croaked out. “Anything that might have happened back in March.”

My heart fell into my asshole. 

Earlier that night, Dad got a phone call from the cops — they told him everything. He was not pleased, but true to his “fuck the pigs” lifestyle, he thought quickly and told them the vehicle was stolen and taken on a joyride. A week later, he got a buddy to pretend they didn’t know each other and report the van dumped on his property. You have to hand it to my dad for coming through in the clutch!

Most of the guys with me on St. Patrick’s Day offered to take the heat with me. I told them I had it handled. The cops didn’t buy the story, but they didn’t have anything to go on. They called the apartment twice and threatened to throw me out of the country if I didn’t tell them who I was with that night, but I told them I wasn’t there, so I couldn’t have been with anyone. The cops backed off, but lest you think I got off without any punishment, worry not gentle reader; Dad kicked my ass all over our apartment. It was the only time I think I earned one of his beatings.