When I was sixteen, I hooked up with a crazy girl. I thought I knew what I was getting into; every guy knows that crazy girls are fun on a short term basis, but if you stay with them they will ruin your life. (John Lennon, Sid Vicious, Randy Quaid, Kurt Cobain, Abraham Lincoln) I was only with this girl about a week before I realized her level of crazy was well above my pay grade. It still took another two weeks of effort to peel this human band-aid off, no quick pull off with this type of girl. But the end was fairly spectacular.

I was lying in my bed at my parents house at around 11pm reading Heavy Metal the comic book when I heard a knock on my window. There stood 120lbs of USDA Certified Prime crazy packaged as a blonde teenage girl. The vortex began to swirl.

“Miranda… what the hell are you doing here? We broke up.” I reminded her

“I have a car, want to come out and party with me annnnd my friend?” She asked. Sex was implied. Did I mention I was sixteen? Catching a sixteen year old male with the lure of sex is about as hard as catching a black lab with a bag of Snausages.

I grabbed my worn leather jacket and put on my zippered paratrooper boots, pocketed a condom, and made a lump in my bed that looked passably human before I climbed out the window. A few hours running amok and back in bed by two I figured.

“I have to be back before my folks get up” I said. The golden rule of sneaking out that everyone knows.

“Sure, no problem, super, let’s rock!” She squealed.

We walked down the side of my house and out onto the street where a car was idling. Some girl I didn’t recognize was driving. I like to think some part of me knew this was going to go south, and not in the good way, but I was probably just thinking about boobs.

Miranda was all smiles. “Whiskey, meet Kelly,” she purred.

“Hi,” Kelly muttered. She seemed a little put off for a chick that was about to party.

We rode to Miranda’s house in Burlingame. I lived in Redwood City, and this is not an insignificant distance. Miranda and I made out in the car all the way there, though, so I kept ignoring the giant red flags waving. Like Kelly not speaking at all, and chain-smoking angrily. This was all part of Miranda’s master plan for revenge I would later have to accept.

We pulled up to her house and got out of the car.

“Are your parents out of town?” I asked, glancing at the dark house. I really hoped that they were.

As soon as we cleared the back seat, Kelly, who hadn’t said a word since our introduction, said “Later” and sped off, taking my ride home and hopes of a multiple lady party with her. Again, I was sixteen. It was then, standing on a dead quiet street lit in softly buzzing sodium orange watching retreating tail lights, that I remembered Miranda was completely bat shit, and she had just trapped my ass on her turf in Burlingame.  The porch light flicked on. Her parents were home… Of course her parents were home. I considered walking twenty miles.

I had to sneak in through her bedroom window while she went in the front door and had the “what the hell are you thinking coming home this late” fight with her parents. This involved fording some seriously thorny hedges. I ended up in her room lying on the floor in between her bed and the wall by the window. These were the days before cell phones, so I couldn’t just text a friend to come get my ass out of there, or even let my parents know that I had been lured into a crazy trap and probably wouldn’t be in my bed in the morning.

To communicate with anyone would mean sneaking through her house in the dark, a house I was totally unfamiliar with, and finding and using a phone while not running into her father. This last thing was imperative to my survival. That would be some Mission Impossible theme song deserving caper, and I was not up to it. Why is it the crazy girl always comes with the ex Navy Seal, Cop, Jedi, Convict… whatever dad?

She came back to her room, but her parents kept randomly checking on her…weird I know, where’s the trust? So I spent most of the night freezing on the floor cramping up, pinned between her bed and my only viable escape route listening to her ramble on about god only knows. Around three in the morning she let me lean out her window to have a cigarette, but three minutes later I was back in my hiding place while her mom yelled at her about smelling her smoking. So I spent the entire night awake on the cold floor half under this lunatic’s bed, trying to remember how I ended up there. Something about boobs.

Fortunately, her folks left early for work and I was safe to use the phone around six am. I paged my friend “Creepy Rob”  because he was the only person I knew with a car, no life, and a pathological need for approval. Thankfully, he actually called back.  I pleaded my case and he agreed to pick my stranded ass up. She made me leave the house with her, while she caught a ride to Catholic school (another red flag) I sat on the curb a few houses down. I heard laughter from girls in plaid as they drove away.

My folks didn’t leave the house until a quarter to eight, so I told myself if I could make it back by seven or seven fifteen, I would stand a chance of not catching hell.  Creepy Rob rolled up around a quarter til seven in a decrepit Saab. Once we were safely on the road, I let out a sigh of relief. Too soon.

Almost immediately we got pulled over, I swear she must have called the cops because we made it about a mile, and were doing nothing wrong. Did I mention that I was sixteen? I think I did, well my creepy friend was 22. He was the weird guy who we hung out with because he could buy beer, didn’t have grownup friends, and would drive us around all day. The cop felt it was odd, a 22 year old creepy guy and a sixteen year old me. He misjudged the power structure. He probably suspected we were lovers, I’m sure he wanted to bust us. Conveniently for the cop the back of the car had a few boxes of ammo in it that were clearly visible through the hatchback window. No guns, just bullets that Creepy Rob had been too lazy to take inside after his last trip to the range. Nothing technically illegal, but the scene was playing havoc on  a cop’s brain.

We were thoroughly searched and harassed and all the while, the clock was ticking. My dad’s alarm had probably gone off already. I had thirty minutes, maybe. It didn’t look good for yours truly.

Then the cop told me to empty my leather jacket, all two dozen pockets. Weird crap kept coming out of my pockets, flashlight, lighter, deck of cards, ten sided dice, but still nothing illegal which was clearly very frustrating for the cop. He became extra grumpy when I suggested he plant a gun on me or something. Midway into it I pulled out a Darkwing Duck action figure that I had found in a box of cereal a couple of days before. Sixteen is a weird age.

“What the hell’s this???” The cop asked, a bit aggressively.

“Darkwing Duck,” I said.

“What?” He asked, dumbfounded. “What’s that?”

“It’s a toy, you play with it.” I then made Darkwing hop around on the roof of the Saab saying, “help help, I’m being searched.”

Next out of my clown car of a jacket came a tube of camouflage paint that I had bought out of a 25 cent impulse bin at an army surplus shop.

Cop: “What is this?”

Me: “camouflage.”

Cop: “Whats if for?”

Me, deadpan: “camouflaging stuff.”

I was already screwed, I didn’t give a shit, I had nothing that he could bust me for and this girl’s revenge had made me testy. The cop even tried to suggest that a clarinet in the car was stolen, like we were going to start an illicit ragtime revival.  It was just too much weirdness for his mind to comprehend. He just knew we were doing something wrong. We had to be, just look at us! Finally he gave up and hauled my ass in, ostensibly because I was a minor getting dangerously close to not being in school and hanging out with some weirdo, but mostly because that was his solution to anything he didn’t understand.

When we got to the station they cut Creepy Rob loose and called my house. My step mom picked me up and was weirdly understanding about the whole thing once I explained it, and she finished reading me the riot act in a police station.  She dropped me at high school and drove away shaking her head and laughing.

Footnote. If an ex lover for no mater how short of a time, ever at anytime in your life knocks on your bedroom window at 11pm, it’s not in your best interest to put on your boots.