My Stint as a Bad A$$

I am a good girl. I always have been. I don’t really have any desire to break the rules and I am probably every parent’s dream. I can only hope my children are as good – they have high expectations to live up to. I never snuck out of the house, never drank underage or tried any drugs. I never lied about where I was. Never got a secret tattoo or hid a piercing from my family. People used to make fun of me because when everyone was answering “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” I’d always say I got yelled at by a mall cop for going up the down escalator when I was 14. It’s the truth. Never stole a pack of gum, never really ran away, never watched an R rated movie until I was 18, never was a part of a secret fight club. Never even done a donut in a parking lot. I remember when I was about 4 I used to enjoy poking my fingers through the plastic wrap on the meat at the supermarket and I recall unintentionally unthreading a few shirts at stores while pulling at the pretty sequins .Sue me. So I ruined less than $100 of things in my life. Anyway, you get the point. Good girl. Sometimes I am so good that I worry people will doubt my goodness. No kid is this good – surely my family must be suspicious that I am hiding something. I can assure you Mom, I am not, nor have I ever. I’m just a good kid!

Now, I also grew up in the era of Laguna Beach and the OC. Everyone on those shows always had a bonfire on the beach. Living in a small town no where near a beach, I never got the opportunity to have a fire anywhere buy my backyard or a camp ground. It’s been on my to-do list for years, but every time I go to a beach, there are always signs that say “No Fires”. Being the rule follower I am, I never lit one, mostly in fear of going to jail! A couple weeks ago I was reading a travel book on San Francisco and they mentioned having a bonfire on the beach. Instantly, it went on my SF bucket list.

I had forgotten all about it until A and I went out to a restaurant which over looked the Pacific. It was late, and therefore dark, and way way out in the distance I saw little flames. Are those fires? I asked him. Yup. I’m sure A thought my enthusiasm was ridiculous, but he agreed to appease me. Living on the shoreline his whole life, A has seen his share of beach bonfires and was not really excited. But being the good person and dedicated friend he is, we drove over to a gas station, bought the Sunday paper (that one has the most paper!) and a cheap lighter. We got to the beach, walked about 300 feet away from the other fires and decided to set up camp. I had brought a blanket and some towels from the hotel with us, so I set up a place to sit while he worked on lighting the fire. In the car was a box of Coke Zero cans and a cardboard box of U- viewbooks. These books aren’t cheap. Like $3 each. But at the end of the trip, if there’s less than ½ a box left, I am supposed to recycle them. If there’s more than a box, I am supposed to send them back to school by mail. But the box was half way and I only had 3 schools left, so I decided the books would make for great kindling. Of course I saved some books for the other schools (too many, actually), but they did, in fact, work well for the fire. We found some left over wood from someone else’s fire and A got to work on lighting it. It took a long time. And flicking the cheap lighter so many times hurt our thumbs pretty bad. I don’t know how people smoke. Nothing would catch on fire, but then all of sudden it went. I took about 50 photos. Way too many of the fire and A wrapped in a hot pink blanket, trying to light it and “be the man.”

Now here is where the story gets interesting. I was told by A that I had to write a blog on this, even though he has his own blog. I told him he could have the story, but apparently I’d make it sound more fun. I’m not going to exaggerate it, though we joked about how the story might unfold in my sitcom life. Here’s the real version:

So we’re huddled up on this tiny towel, looking at the stars, listening to the waves crashing on the beach, and having some good conversation, when I see this spot light shine on some of our other fire people. The light was coming from a cop car in the parking lot. “That’s a cop! Crap!” I know the book said fires were okay at one beach, but I couldn’t remember if that was the beach we were on. We didn’t see any signs earlier, but why else would the cop be there!? Not knowing what to do, A suggested we run. I couldn’t find my shoes, but I found them. He fumbled with the cardboard box, which I told him to leave behind, but he didn’t want anything to get traced back to us and my name was on the box. We jogged back to the parking, leaving the fire burning. But what else were we to do? We didn’t even have a water bottle to pour on it and the water was a ways away. Besides, how would we even get the water from the ocean to the flames? Our cupped hands? Right. We didn’t think this whole thing through all the way. I felt bad, but we got into the car and sped off, hoping the car wouldn’t chase us. I had no shoes on and had no idea where we were going, but there was no time to fight with Garmin for directions. We just drove about 20 minutes and figured it all out later, laughing the whole way about my stint as a B-A. It was pretty exciting, not going to deny it. And we got to cross off another thing from my bucket list. The list is big, but this California trip crossed off quite a few things! (Special shout out of thanks to A)

Here’s the more adventurous story, exaggerated as A was hoping for:

One night A and I decided to have a bonfire on the beach. The fire was huge and blazing hot so we were laying next to the fire, scantily clad. The cops drove up, shined their big white spot light on us, and we panicked when they saw the whites of our eyes. We had no choice but to run. The smoke was so thick it could keep out of sight, for a while. I couldn’t find my shoes, or clothes, in the sand, so A suggested we just run as fast as we could. We got to the car, but my keys were still back at the beach. It was quicker to smash the window and turn it on using the hotwiring we had installed, just in case something like this happened. We sped out of the parking lot, ran a red light, swerved to avoid hitting a car, and burned rubber as we took the corner. Fortunately, I am a great driver and this style of driving was nothing new to me. The cops searched for a while, but there were others on the beach with fires, so they left us and we sped off into the night. We drove all the way to Los Angeles, 7 hours south, before we decided it was safe to turn around again. We decided the next night we would try again, that is if the whole beach hadn't gone up in flames from the huge fire we left in the dust.