|
So where have I been all this time, you're probably wondering? It's been months since my last column appeared here at Tripod. At the time, it looked like I might not be writing here any more, but thanks to all of you who wrote in demanding more Tyler V., I'm back. Looks like my column will be appearing here once every two months for the next year, so be sure to e-mail me at [email protected].
|
By
Tyler Valdez
|
A lot has happened since summer ended, as you can imagine if you read my last column, but I'm not going to dwell on that stuff right now. Maybe in a future column. Right now, while the memory is still white-hot, I want to tell you about my Thanksgiving.
My mother's sister — my Aunt Connie — and her family moved out of Boston about five years ago, when my Uncle Neil got a great job offer from a software company — only thing was, they had to move to a small town in Pennsylvania. All I've heard from my cousin Courtney since then is how great it is there, how there's no crime and everyone's so nice, and stuff like that. I've never really spent any time away from the city, besides one field trip to an egg farm in Boxboro when I was seven. So when my family got invited to have Thanksgiving with them this year, I was excited to see rural life up close and personal.
The day we got there, the day before Thanksgiving, was a lot of fun. We all went to an apple orchard to pick apples for a pie, and my aunt and cousin even got me on the back of a horse for a few minutes! It was great to see Courtney again, and we stayed up all night catching up. Thanksgiving Day, there were 12 members of my extended family around the big oak table in the converted-farmhouse kitchen, and no one even made fun of me for not eating meat.
Friday night, Courtney decided to host a slumber party so I could meet all her friends. I've done sleep-overs before, but I'd never been to a real slumber party like you see on TV. I liked Courtney's friends (I think her whole soccer team was there). It was a lot of fun at first. We watched "Sleeping with the Enemy" on Courtney's DVD player and screamed all the way through it. I told Courtney she should have slumber parties more often, and she said, "What do you mean? We have them all the time!"
It turns out that in her town, there's a curfew. Everyone 17 and under has to be inside by 10 pm. I couldn't believe it! But when I expressed my shock to Courtney and her friends, everyone told me how it's really a good thing. They told me that it not only keeps teenagers from getting into trouble (apparently there had been some graffiti, and some animal mutilation — gross!), but it also keeps them safe from the kinds of creeps who prey on teenagers. They kept telling me how dangerous it is in the city — apparently the only things Courtney remembers about Boston are something horrible she saw in the basement of the Boston Public Library once, and the time some guys yelled "Mámi!" at her when she was walking home from the subway. She also kept talking about how dirty and smelly her old neighborhood was, which kind of offended me.
It seems like all Courtney and her friends get to do is go to school- or church-sponsored events and have slumber parties. They claim they're not a bunch of goody-two-shoes, that some of them drink and smoke and fool around with guys if they want to, but that they just have to do it all before 10 o'clock at night. It sounded like a drag to me, and I told them that. But they all kept saying how glad they were that they don't have "big city" problems there, like double parking, crack, and teenage pregnancies. While we were on that subject, one of the other girls brought up abortion. She started talking about how the only thing worse than having a baby out of wedlock is getting an abortion — because even though having a baby as a teenager would pretty much mean your life would suck from then on, having an abortion would be the end of a life. Someone else brought up how doctors who perform abortions keep getting shot, and Courtney said, "I don't think it's right to actually assassinate anybody or anything, but it's kind of like it's an eye for an eye. Like, if you kill someone, and then someone kills you, it might be against the law, but it's kind of fair."
I didn't want to get into a big argument, but I couldn't believe what I was hearing. As soon as I could, I told everyone good night, and went to the guest room. I got into bed, but it was so quiet there (except for the crickets and something I assumed was an owl) I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about this curfew. Back in Boston, all my friends would be out enjoying themselves at this time of night on a Friday. Here, the only things out were the crickets and an owl. It's supposed to be so beautiful and great in the country, but if you're a teenager, I guess it's only beautiful and great when it's light out. I was dying to know what a whole town without teenagers looks like on a Friday night. So I put my clothes and my leather jacket on over my pajamas and I sneaked out the back door of the house to see for myself. I was strangely excited, even though back home I could go out at night whenever I wanted to (as long as I'd finished my homework). It occurred to me that the best thing about a curfew is breaking it.
It was dark out, dark like I didn't know it could be dark. Dead leaves whirled around my ankles, but nothing else moved. I walked toward the only streetlight I could see, about three blocks away. There was no one around at all, anywhere. I heard something crashing around in the trees past my cousin's house and almost started running. I think it was a raccoon, but I was more scared at that moment than I had ever been by the sound of some liquored-up homeless guy coming up behind me on the sidewalk. My heart was pounding by the time I got to the main street of the town. Except for a pizza place, a gas station, an Osco drugstore, and a Blockbuster, most of the stores were already closed. I walked into all of them, but people gave me such weird looks, like I was a shoplifter or something, that I left right away.
I was getting creeped out. The only people around were the clerks in the stores, and they were all closing up, anyway. I retraced my steps towards the house, but just as I was about to turn the corner onto their street, a police cruiser pulled up to the sidewalk and cut me off. I almost jumped out of my skin! The officer got out of his car, aimed his giant flashlight in my face, and asked me in a mean voice what I thought I was doing.
I had a prepared a story in case something like this happened. I started to tell him I was just visiting my uncle and aunt, and I wasn't from around here, when two more cruisers pulled up. Now I was getting seriously freaked out, like maybe someone who looked like me had just held up a liquor store. But as it turned out, they had all been driving around looking for that teenage girl in the leather jacket who was wandering around the town. I told them they could just take me three blocks and they could talk to my parents, but they made me get in the back seat of one of the cars, behind the Plexiglas shield, and accompany them to the police station.
At the station, I had to sit on a cold metal bench in the lobby for fifteen minutes while they got my aunt, uncle, father, and mother out of bed. I overheard the cops talking about me. It seems that they had received half a dozen calls, from all of the stores I'd been in that night, complaining about a teenage girl breaking the curfew law. I think there was some kind of reward for dropping the dime on me. In fact, when my parents got there, the cop who brought me in made them watch a surveillance video of me in Blockbuster. There I was, in smeary black and white, reading the back of the box of "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!" Boy, was I humiliated. They told my parents that some neighbors of my aunt and uncle had called and reported seeing me, too.
My dad had to write a check for $125 on the spot, and I had to sign some papers admitting I was guilty, so I wouldn't have to come back later for a court appearance. I felt terrible that my little walk had cost my parents so much money. On the ride back to my aunt and uncle's, though, it got worse. Even though my dad was mad at me, he said something to my aunt about how stupid the curfew law is, and that started a big argument. Turns out my aunt and uncle thought I deserved to get arrested! My uncle said he didn't miss living in the city, listening to people getting drunk and yelling and honking their horns all night. He said the curfew is a great idea, and he thinks it should be adopted by every city and town in the country. He said Courtney would never sneak out of the house in the middle of the night just to go walk around a video store, and made it sound like maybe I had some other agenda. (Yeah, like I'd be able to to buy crack in their little town even if I wanted to.)
Breakfast the next morning was tense. I got the feeling my parents were mad at my aunt and uncle, and vice versa. I have a strong suspicion that we won't be going back there next Thanksgiving, and I don't think Courtney and her parents will be coming to our place, either. We wouldn't want Uncle Neil to accidentally hear a car alarm and have an aneurysm, now would we?
Until we went to rural Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving, my entire experience of small town America was from watching TV shows like "Andy Griffith." But you know what? There are no teenagers on "Andy Griffith," just old people and Opie. Maybe that's how people like my aunt and uncle want life to be. Maybe they want their streets to be empty and dead after dark. Maybe they think a boring town is a good thing, that it's better for kids to stay indoors and learn about life from Julia Roberts movies than to actually go outside and learn about life firsthand.
I, for one, don't want to live like that. In fact, I never want to go to that boring town again, even when I'm old enough to buy pizza at midnight. But what if the curfew comes to me? I saw an article in the paper about teen curfews, and it sounds like people want to have them all over the country. According to the article, some parents have sued for infringement of their teenagers' civil rights, but will that really change anything? When it comes to the rights of teenagers vs. the paranoid fears of adults, I wonder who's going to win.
—Tyler V.
Tyler Valdez isn't afraid to say what's on her mind, and we love her for it. This was the eighth edition of her Mad Crib. Catch up on what you missed in Tyler's archive.
|  |
|
|
