Growing Up in the 80’s Part 4: Danger Zone

By Destro Designs – Viper Den Studios

I’m gonna drop a few things we did as kids that wouldn’t fly at all today. A lot of the shit I did just can’t be said in public, but these are good.

At the end of my block was a laundromat. A lot happened there.

In the winter, a plow would come through and push all the snow into one corner. Naturally, we would sleigh ride the hell out of that bad boy. But a seven- or eight-foot drop wasn’t enough, so we made it more fun like the little animals we were.

We would take buckets of water from my friend’s basement and soak the sidewalk from the snow pile all the way to the street, making a freaking ice luge. So when we would rifle down that slope, we would hit that ice luge like a 7.62 round blasting out of the chamber and slide right into the road like absolute crazy kids.

About six or seven times, somebody came super close to being run over.

Also at this laundromat was a pair of arcade games that I played alllll the time: Pac-Man and Galaga.

One of the neighborhood kids, who was a little older, went all Leonardo da Vinci on us and created the most amazing thing.

Pablo Martinez took a quarter and, using a Makita hand drill, put a tiny hole near one corner. He slipped a length of fishing line through it and tied the other end to the belt loop just above the fifth pocket on his Levi’s.

He would slide that quarter in until the magical sound of getting a credit would DING, then slowly draw it back and forth, triggering the credit sensor without letting the quarter drop far enough to get past the one-way flapper that would trap the coin.

I don’t know how many times I got to play Galaga for free, but it was a motherfucking lot.

I’m pretty sure some nosy Nelly eventually ratted him out to the owner, who caught him one day. That guy never paid much attention to us until this lady with a nasty look and big hair hollered that what we were doing was wrong.

She apparently didn’t know that snitches get stitches.

Kitty-corner from the laundromat was a place called the Junior Museum.

It was a glorious place with so much shit for kids to do. The entire second floor had a planetarium and a reptile zoo. The first floor had a bunch of different things you could get your hands on and play with, all of a scientific nature.

Like all good things, it lost its funding and closed down when I was, I think, nine.

But as soon as it did, we found a way to get onto the stairs of the fire escape and make our way up to the roof of the building.

We did so much shit up there. It became a sort of clubhouse for the neighborhood crew.

We must’ve tossed about 30 dozen eggs off that roof and blasted so many cars.

Now, we weren’t assholes.

We only threw snowballs at the CDTA buses because they would swerve when they got hit.

But eggs? They were different.

Most of the time, the driver wouldn’t even notice until they got home.

Snowballs, though, we didn’t throw those at cars. I’m pretty sure my dad laid down the law on the snowballs.

My grandfather was the mechanic for my town’s police station, so I would get threatened with being taken down there all the time.

One time, I actually did have to go down there.

I had just come back from Lake George, the popular vacation spot near my house. Back then, you could get your hands on everything that was awesome in the eighties up there, from nunchucks to handcuffs to throwing stars.

One year, I got myself a pair of official steel handcuffs.

I promptly came home and put the handcuffs on a friend of mine, and it was awesome.

Then, later, while we were joking around, I put one of the cuffs on my own wrist.

And then I couldn’t find the key.

My friend and I tried to hide it as best as we could.

A short while later, I was in the car with my dad on the way to Chuck E. Cheese, and I finally had to tell him that the handcuff was stuck on my wrist and we didn’t have the key.

He got fuming mad and drove me straight to the police station.

They tried a bunch of keys, but none of them worked.

Eventually, somebody pulled out a hacksaw.

Of course, there were a couple of cops standing around, and they used the opportunity to scare the absolute shit out of me.

They told me I might have to lose my arm because they were going to have to cut the handcuff off, and who knew what might happen?

Good ending, though.

They got it off.

And I was still able to go to Chuck E. Cheese afterward, following copious amounts of apologizing and begging.

The kid I was with that day has been my best friend my whole life.

I’ve got a lot of other really good friends I grew up with, but that dude always walked into the line of fire with me on many occasions.

Thanks for traveling down memory lane with me, y’all.