10. Living with a Nazi

Gabe Wood

Prof. Steadman

Writing 150

Living with a Nazi

            We stealthily climbed the recently vacuumed carpeted stairs and entered the gleaming kitchen. Not a speck of dust to be found nor a crumb to be nibbled on in the entire kitchen. Every appliance was sparkling in that special way that only recently cleaned things do.

“I don’t know about this, man,” I murmured.

Dane whispered back in a nonchalant manner “Bro, I’m your best friend. Plus, this isn’t a big deal at all.” As my bare feet started to pad across the cold, hard wooden floor of the kitchen I replied,

“Nothing is a big deal for you! You are a rule-breaker at heart.” Failing to address the real problem as he always did, Dane quickly replied as though he had expected me to make that accusation and he had already thought of his counter-argument.

“You know I wouldn’t make you do anything that wasn’t one hundred percent worth it. . .  I’m telling you, hot chocolate is a million times better after midnight. You wouldn’t know, your mom is too strict on the rules for you to have ever experienced this,” He said with that huge mischievous smile that he always wore when he was convincing me to do something that I knew that I shouldn’t do.

“Fine.” I said under my breath “Just try not to make any noise, Mom is sleeping just on the other side of that wall,” I pointed to the large wall that was across the living room and had a very large painting of Jesus on it.

“Yeah, yeah. Just think about it though, who knows if we are going to be able to talk our parents into letting us have a sleep-over ever again? We have to make the most of the night while we still have it,” classic. I’m over here thinking that if we behave well, and nothing goes wrong then maybe we’ll be able to have more sleep-over later on, and he is just thinking about the now—acting as if the world was going to end tomorrow and no consequence would ever really reach him. Aloud I simply said, “You’re right, let’s do this,” without any heart behind the statement. My idea was boring, and his was fun. He just poked and prodded enough until I succumbed to the part of myself that actually wanted to do the ridiculous thing that he was suggesting.

I began getting the necessary materials ready for the perfect cup of hot-chocolate and soon enough the hot chocolate machine was giving off a low rumbling as it stirred and heated the hot-chocolate. I settled into the stool and eased into a more comfortable state of mind, thinking well if we were going to get caught it would’ve happened already.

That’s when we heard the loud clearing of someone’s throat. It was more of an announcing of one’s presence than an actual clearing of the throat. Like a lioness finding her prey trapped, knowing that escape was impossible, and making noise just to scare them before she had her fun. We slowly turned around and Dane made a small, involuntary squeak as my mom, with her hands on her hips and a how-are-you-going-to-explain-this? expression on her face, came into view.

“Boys, why am I disappointed right now?” my mom almost spitted out. I quickly respond before Dane can say something that will really get my mom going.

“Because this isn’t the first time that you’ve told us to get to bed, and the fact that we are up here right now, looks like a direct disobedience.”

“Looks like!?” my mom throws back at me, daring me to hold to that statement. Uh oh! I look over at Dane in hopes for an escape. On second thought, maybe he shouldn’t say anything. Yeah he knows just how to get on my mom’s nerves. Definitely better that he doesn’t say anything . . . But I’m already looking at him. It was too late, I could almost feel Dane getting ready to say whatever it is that he always says to get out of the infinite number of tight situations that he has escaped in the past.

“Traci, I know that you don’t know this, but in my house, I cannot go to sleep unless I have a warm cup of milk.” Dane begins, but I know that it’ll never work. And it doesn’t.

Mom simply tells us, “Boys, you knew a very long time ago that you needed to go to bed at 10:30 so that you could wake up and be ready to make your first day of education week a good one. If you needed anything you should’ve been preparing for that before. This wasn’t a surprise.” We both decided that it was damage control time. In his humblest voice, Dane decided that apology was the best course of action,

“You are right Traci, I should’ve planned better. We’ll head to bead right now” We headed to bed only thinking about one thing,

“Man!” I say in a frustrated whisper, making sure that my mom doesn’t hear us, “I just wish she would’ve caught us after we had enjoyed the hot-chocolate”

“Seriously,” Dane whispers back, “your mom is a Nazi when comes to rules. Totally heartless.”

That was when disaster struck. Well, in reality it was a lightning that struck, but tonight they were one in the same. We saw the flash brighter than the sun, felt the rumble right in our chests, and heard a crack just like a whip followed by the we lingering growl of lightning and its companion, thunder. We looked at each other and just start giggling.

“Dude, we have to go out there and check it out.” Dane insisted. Have to? I mean I want to, I would really like to, but have to?

Aloud, I just said a measly, “Yeah?” putting up a purposefully weak defense, because a small part of me really did want to go and do whatever dumb thing that he had in mind.

“Yeah!” He continued on enthusiastically and eventually we clambered onto the wet roof of my home, sitting on the steep face and enjoyed the show of lights and booms till the early hours of the next morning.

            “That worked perfect! I told you we wouldn’t get caught” exclaimed Dane as we peeled back the matching blue and green checkered sheets on our beds to go to sleep with the empty mugs of hot chocolate still in sitting on our dark wood night stands. Dane threw the nerf foot ball at the light across the room and the light flicked out.

“Nice shot” I whispered over to him. It seems that we had executed a perfect sleepover: full of fun and mischief and free of consequences.

A mere two hours later the alarm sounds and we bounce out of bed preparing to to prove to Mom that we did not in fact need any more sleep than we had received.

I only successfully made it through one of the many classes that day without falling asleep, I began my drive home alone, because I had to leave a little early for work. The sun was beating down on my face, making half of it over heat and become uncomfortable, and the light from the sun felt blinding. The light left me with an overwhelming desire to just close my eyes. My eyelids began to feel as thought they were filled with concrete and I was fighting to keep them open. I thought to myself I am on the freeway right now. I can’t fall asleep. I would literally die. That kept me going for another few minutes,

BANG! I swerved to get back into my lane and looked in my rear view mirror just in time to see the big orange barrel that had just shattered my right headlight and ripped off my right side-view mirror rolling towards the median of the freeway. I got off at the next exit, pulled into the nearest parking lot, put the car in park. My deep breaths did not calm me down as I had planned. I whipped out my cellphone and called my mom. That didn’t work either.

Allowed to myself after hanging up I said, “Consequence free, huh?” mocking my thoughts from the night before.

A week later Dane and I stood up from my parents huge king-size bed, we could still feel the impressions of carpet on our knees from the . . . faith filled (super long) prayer of my dad, my mom hugged us both.

“Boys, hand over the cell-phones before you scurry on to bed,” said my mom as was customary in my house.

“Can’t you forget to ask us just once, Traci?” Dane groaned as he grudgingly handed his phone over to my mom.

“I doubt it, but it sure won’t be the day before your first day of school. You boys need your beauty sleep” replied my mom. I promptly handed over my phone. I knew better than to argue, my mother was known to punish complainers with no phone privileges the whole next day. As we started across the living room towards the basement where our bedrooms were, we heard a muffled “Hit the lights on the way down!” from the bedroom. As we clicked the plastic switches, Dane looked at me mischievously and said,

“Bro, I heard about small little get together for a back-to-school party tonight. I already have a girl coming to pick us up at midnight on the dot. All we have to do is sneak out the window!” I smiled right back at him and said,

“I would love to accompany you, but I know which of these two options will make me happier in the end. Goodnight” He proceeded to poke and prod try to convince me, but I simply wasn’t going to play that game anymore, I simply proceeded to prepare for bed.