The Teenage Brain

I firmly believe that many teenage brains are late in developing the part that controls judgement and promotes survival. In looking back at some of the shenanigans that my friends and I pulled as teenagers, I’m convinced that we had that kind of undeveloped brain. Here are some examples that I believe support this theory:

Unique Greeting

Kenny, Mahlon and I had an agreement that when we passed on the road driving in opposite directions, instead of greeting each other by waving, we would swap lanes and pass each other on the wrong side. This was our way of saying hello – also it would scare the bejesus out of any one riding with us. It worked quite well except for the following notable exceptions:

One day I saw Kenny’s car coming toward me and I pulled into the left lane as agreed. What I didn’t know was that it was Kenny’s mom driving his car to shop for groceries. She didn’t know about our secret greeting so she ended up in the ditch.

Another time I saw a big red dump truck in the wrong lane coming straight at me at a high rate of speed. In order to keep from hitting it head-on I took to the ditch. I learned later that it was Mahlon, who had just been hired by Herman Miller to drive a big red dump truck. I did not know about this, but that didn’t stop him from saying “hello” in the agreed manner.

Busted!

One evening Kenny and I were slowly cruising around downtown Akron. Kenny was driving and we were each slowly sipping on a bottle of beer. One of the city policemen spotted us and pulled us over. I set my beer on the floor beside my leg hoping the cop wouldn’t notice it, but Kenny just kept on drinking.

“GIMME THAT BEER”, the cop said to Kenny in a loud demanding voice.

Now I have to explain that Kenny had somewhat of a stuttering problem. When the cop asked for the beer, Kenny handed the bottle to him, looked him straight  in the eye, and said with a stutter:

“Doooooo you want a glass?”

The policeman looked at Kenny in disbelief. Suddenly he burst out laughing, handed the bottle back to Kenny and said, “Get out of here and don’t come back”.

So we did – and didn’t.

Scamming The System

Another thing our teenage brains told us to do was always try to scam the system. Here are two examples:

In every gas station and bar there was a peanut dispensing machine. Each machine had a glass bowl about the size of a soccer ball full of salted peanuts. Beneath the bowl was a lever along with a coin slot and dispenser chute. To get a handful of peanuts you put a penny in the slot and moved lever to the right. Then put your hand below the chute, moved the handle to the left and the peanuts would fall into your hand. We found  that we could take a piece of stiff wire, bend one end into a circle the size of a penny, and place it in the slot while holding onto the wire. We then put a paper sack under the chute and moved the lever back and forth until the sack was full or the machine was empty.

Another thing every restaurant and bar had was a juke box with small kiosks at the bar for selecting songs. These were hooked to the main machine by 3 wires. We learned that we could take a straight pin, puncture the insulation of two of these wires, and when we moved the pin rapidly in and out, a series of clicks could be heard over at the main machine. A little practice with this setup would allow us to play every song on the jukebox – for no money! When the man came to empty the money bucket on the jukebox, he would look around suspiciously at the customers because the money box would be almost empty, even though the counter showed that hundreds of songs had been played.

We didn’t particularly like peanuts, nor did we care to listen to the music on the jukebox, but we had beaten the system and impressed our friends.  That made our undeveloped teenage brains happy.

In today’s world these shenanigans would probably also make us convicts!