Many of us have tales of grand misadventures from our youth where we let our naivete and impetuousness get the better of us. My most infamous teenage picaresque tale involves a Christmas-gift makeup kit; my best friend, Brian; two illegally-bought bottles of Boone’s Farm wine; and a late-night stroll alongside a good stretch of rural North Carolina roadway.

The year was 1982, and Brian and I were 15-year-old ninth-graders at West Lee Junior High, one of only two junior highs in Lee County. The other was – wait for it – East Lee. We weren’t too smart in Lee County. But we were hell on directions.

I, bluntly speaking, was a dork. I watched classic movies and spun out pithy wordplay putdowns among my pals like “What a maroon.” Tall and lanky, with straight sandy hair and thick-plastic framed glasses, I dressed in mostly faded polos and worn cords or jeans. I even carted around a bookbag. Not a backpack, a flat-bottomed bookbag. I constantly walked around school looking like a sad old bum getting ready to board a steamer. Brian was Dean Martin to my Jerry Lewis. He starred on our football team. He sported black hair he styled and parted down the middle. He wore a Members Only jacket. But we’d somehow become friends in seventh grade, a friendship cemented by the fact we lived very close to one another in the country, as Southerners call the farmland and woods outside a city’s limits. Or what everyone else in the country would call the boondocks.

But I was a dork who liked girls. But girls weren’t into dorks in the 1980s (that was more of a ‘90s thing – lucky dorks.) And I liked April, the strawberry-blond beauty of our class, most of all.

One afternoon, Brian and I had finished lunch and were milling about with the rest of our class on the concrete plaza outside the cafetorium. (Yes, a cafetorium: a weird educational innovation – hopefully long-ago abandoned – in which a raised floor sat above a sunken cafeteria. We could eat and listen to the principal deliver a school update from a wheeled-in lectern or nosh on our tater tots while watching a skit from the drama club. Kind of like dinner theater for children.) Just by chance, we soon found ourselves talking with April. I stood there like a maroon with a whacked grin on my face and watched the hot sun light up the blonde streaks in her hair. In the course of conversation, April mentioned she liked this strange-sounding wine that her older sister had let her recently try: Boone’s Farm. This must be top-shelf grape, I thought, if lovely April drinks it. Then she dropped a bomb: that Friday night she and her friend, Lisa, another lovely lass from our class, would be staying at her parent’s house while they were gone for the night. With that, April waltzed away.

I dropped my bookbag in shock and stood there transfixed. Not willing to admit to myself that April was just making conversation (like the adults would say), I viewed the exchange as a veiled invitation. Excitedly, I turned to Brian. “Did you hear that? April will be home alone on Friday – and with Lisa. All we have to do is show up with a couple bottles of this Boone’s Farm, and she is sure to let us in!”

Brian grabbed me by my hand-me-down Lacoste lapels. He wanted to rid me of this unattainable dream before we both got hurt. “Let it go,” he said, “it’s Chinatown.” (No, Brian did not say that. He would not reference a classic movie at such a momentous hour. I was the nerd who would have said that – and no one would have known what the hell I was talking about.)  “April and Lisa are out of our league,” he did say. “And even if they weren’t, how could we buy wine? We’re 15! And even if we could buy wine, how would we get it and us to April’s house? We’re not old enough to drive, and we don’t have a car!” My sister, my daughter! Brian slapped me across the face. (No, he didn’t do that either.) The bell rang to end lunch period. I picked up my bookbag and, dejected, went to class.

 But I couldn’t let it go. April and me? Possible smooching? Tantalizing. Of course, she had not insinuated a hook-up in the least – or even invited me over! – but how could a bout of lip smacking not take place if I showed up with that bottle of Boone’s Farm? She’d be surprised, sure, but then we’d retire to her parents’ den, and by the glow of Charlie’s Angels on the TV, drink to our health and to the health of this great nation. Grateful for the wine and weakened by the hypnotic effect of cheesy 80s pseudo-feminist drama, she would be sure to let me kiss her. It had to work. But how to make it happen?

I thought on it through the rest of the day. I thought on it that night. Homework? Bah. This was Euclidian geometry to me, man! Every bit of the puzzle posed problems. But the biggest problem? The wine. How do we buy wine, underage and looking every bit of it with our baby faces? Then it came to me as I laid on my bed, eyes glued to the popcorn ceiling. A disguise!

Last Christmas I had received a stage make-up kit as a present. It had remained on my closet shelf since then, unused and unwanted, next to a Rubik’s Cube and a once-played Dark Tower. But now, maybe I could make this baby pay off. Scrambling to the closet I retrieved the box and placed it on my bedroom floor. I opened it. Holy Reaganomics. This thing was a delinquent’s dream. It had fake scars, tats, powder to make your hair look gray. But most importantly it had a bag of loose, fake hair and a clear bottle of spirit gum. Just what I needed to craft what made a man look old to a 15-year-old: a beard.

I had the way to get the wine. Now, how to get to the store to buy the wine? And how to then get to April’s? I called Brian and quickly filled him in on my disguise idea. He scoffed, but then intrigued, begged me to continue.

“OK, we need someone to drive us to the store, right? What about Darryl?” I asked. Darryl, a 17-year-old friend with a driver’s license – and a truck.

That would work, Brian admitted. But how do we then get to April’s?

“I’ve got that figured. Listen: My parents are going out for dinner Friday night. Tell your parents you are spending Friday night at my house, and you and Darryl show up right after they leave. That gives us a good 90 minutes for me to don the disguise, Darryl to take us to the store and bring us back to my house, and for me to take off my disguise. After my parents return, we’ll wait for the right opportunity and sneak out and walk to April’s!”

Brian dropped the phone. April lived in Owl’s Nest, a development at least a good five miles from my house. A good chunk of that uphill. “Walk. At night. To April’s? And then walk back? What, man, are you insane?” Brian raged. Yes, insane with the possibility of smooching, I told him! And you could smooch with Lisa, I reminded him. He scoffed, but then intrigued, begged me to continue.

Friday night arrived with a heist-movie feel. I sat in my room, agitated, until my parents, finally, left the house for their dinner date. Brian and I were now on the clock, and we were going to have to hustle – and have a little Lady Luck on our side – to pull this caper off. I dialed Brian and told him Darryl could now bring him over. I then rushed to my bathroom with the bag o’hair and spirit gum. Grabbing fingerfuls of hair (cat? monkey? What was this stuff?) from the bag, I dabbed them with the gum and stuck them to my neck and face. Moving quickly, I assembled a decent (I thought) scraggly yet patchy beard and mustache. Truth is I looked like an escaped convict who’d stumbled out of the woods after being on the lam for two months. This disguise needed help to push it over the top (which in this case was 18 years of age, the legal drinking age at the time in NC.) I donned my older brother’s blue jean jacket he’d left lying on the couch and grabbed at one of the hats on the rack above our front door. It turned out to be a denim blue and white-striped train conductor’s hat. (Damn, those ‘80s fads!) Now I looked like an escaped railroad engineer who’d been on the lam for two months. But, still, I thought, I’d sell me wine. I’d sell this demented-looking bastard anything to get him out of my store.

Brian rushed through the door. He and Darryl had just arrived. Brian stared. Then, he laughed.  I glanced at the clock on the wall. We were behind schedule; I needed to get this train back on time. “C’mon,” I said. “We’ve got to hurry.”

Darryl gaped from the driver’s side window. He didn’t talk until we were all nestled onto the bench seat, and he had begun the drive to the nearest convenience store, which incidentally happened to be within spitting distance of our junior high. “This isn’t going to work,” Darryl kept repeating like some downer mantra. Brian, laughing, said it would. And I knew it would. I don’t know why, but I was filled with misplaced confidence, and I was calm. God, indeed, does shieldeth the stupid. 

I directed Downer Darryl to pull into a perpendicular space away from the convenience store’s glass front so the cashier would not see me get out of the passenger side. Darryl shaking his head, and Brian still giggling, I climbed from the truck. Now or never. I stood for a second by the hood and pulled my oversized blue jean jacket straight and tugged my cap down tighter. I scrunched my shoulders and began a sort of ambling, head-down, shuffling gait toward the doors. What was I doing?! Did I think older people walked differently? A little panic had seeped into my façade of confidence, and I was going off-book like the true maroon I was. Nothing to do but plow, or shuffle, ahead. I turned to walk into the store – and passed right by a high school girl from my church! She pulled an open-mouth look of incredulous horror with a hint of recognition, which is tough to do, trust me. It was as if a mangy dog had walked upright by her, in a choo-choo cap, glasses and a blue jean jacket, no less. I could see her thinking what is this hideous creature, and why does it look familiar to me? I am probably responsible for therapy somewhere in this lady’s life.

I kept walking. My heart thumping now, I entered the store and shuffled straight to the beer and wine cooler in back. I scanned the bottles. Finding Boone’s Farm, I grabbed two. I can’t remember what flavors; this was not the moment to weigh the merits of Strawberry Hill or Country Kwencher. I turned toward the counter. The moment of truth. Trying my best to look like a confident rummy who just wanted his goddamned sweet wine and no small talk, I placed the bottles on the counter and stared at their glass bottoms. The old, plump lady rang the sale up and told me the price. I threw a twenty her way, and she gave me change. Grabbing my now-paper-bagged booty, I, slowly, yet still shuffling, left the premises. I heard Brian’s muffled laughter from the truck as I walked toward it. He did it, I could imagine him yelling. Huzzah!

I had done it. Now, this being the South, my chances of walking into that store and just bare-faced trying to buy the wine as my undisguised teenage self were 50-50. I bet after I left the store, that pudgy old gal had laughed and said to the next person in line, “Did you see that kid? Jesus. My beard‘s better than that.” But I had done it. And now I sat holding my precious tight. Brian continued to laugh. “I knew it would work,” he kept saying.  “Me, too,” said Darryl.

But the heist was not complete. The clock still ticked! Darryl dropped us off, and Brian and I ran into my house. I stashed the bottles in my room. My parents were not back yet, but I could sense them approaching. I raced to the bathroom and hurriedly removed the beard using a liquid included in the kit. The directions said to go slow removing anything attached with spirit gum, but I hurriedly did the deed and, as a result, left a nice little strawberry on my right cheek. No time to cry. Maybe April could kiss it and make it better. I gathered the clumps of fake hair and buried them in the trash. I joined Brian on the couch, a sheen of sweat on my body. “Now, all we have to do is wait,” I said.

Sneaking out would, believe it or not, be the easy part. Behind our house sat a small shack my dad had fixed up when we moved here and built our home. He had rigged it with electricity and baseboard heat. My older brother and sister had laid down old rugs and put in a used sofa and chairs. We referred to it as the Old House, and it made a great teenage hangout. Brian and I had spent the night there on the floor in our sleeping bags many times.

After my parents got back, and Brian and I scarfed down a quick supper my mom made, we retired to the Old House with the booze concealed in our sleeping bags. We made small talk until the lights dimmed in my house. Creeping into the night, each of us armed with a bottle of Boone’s Farm, we scuttled by the house and kept low until we drew even with the road and could walk upright. Filled with the excitement of verboten adventure, we whispered away about what lay ahead at the end of our hike, two gray streaks in the moonlight walking in line along the shoulder of the road. Now, this being the South, in the country, at 10PM at night, we didn’t have to worry too much about traffic. Only two or three cars passed us at first. There were no problems. Until Brian lost his nerve.

Now, don’t get me wrong, Brian had courage. You don’t start at center on a football team and earn conference honors unless you do. But the specter of a parent’s anger can make the bravest boy quake in his ASICS. And that specter began to hover over Brian as we slowly distanced ourselves out of eyesight of my house. Each passing car became my parents, who finding us AWOL on a bed check, had become enraged and hopped into our Toyota station wagon, somehow deduced we had decided to walk off into the night – and in what direction, of course! – and were now chasing us down, my dad’s fist waving out the window in anger.              

The first two times Brian yelled-whispered “I think that’s your parents!” as the headlights of an approaching car appeared, I talked his fear back into its shell. Keep it together, man, I implored. I was thinking of April and had no time for cowards. The cars passed. But then we had to deviate from what had been a mostly straight line of roadway and turn to the right at a T-intersection. We had gone about 200 yards on this road when headlights appeared behind us and on the horizon. “It’s your parents!” Brian yelled with no whisper this time. We froze.  The car slowly approached the intersection. We crouched and watched. The beams turned in our direction! “It is my parents!” I yelled. We dove into the ditch at our back. The fear of parents makes cowards of us all.     

Now, diving into a ditch in the South could be problematic. Diving into a ditch in the South in the dark of night and not knowing what is there could be suicidal. We could’ve landed on a broken, rusting and jagged 55-gallon drum that could’ve disemboweled Brian (and then served as his coffin). We could’ve landed on a dead possum. We could’ve landed on a live possum. Or a bed of shards of Wild Irish Rose bottles, or any one of four poisonous snakes that call NC home. But, luckily, we landed on soft vegetation and watched the hazy cone of the headlights pass. It was not my parents. We laid there a while, backs against the ditch. I don’t know which one of us posited throwing in the towel, but the other readily agreed. Our nerves couldn’t take any more. And we’d only gone about two miles. We backtracked home, occasionally taking sips of our hard-won wine. What good was it now?

My house was quiet and dark. The car was in the driveway. No one had been looking for us. No one even knew we were gone. We snuck back into the Old House and sank into the bed-sheet covered sofa and continued to nip at our wine and talk in the dark about what we had just done. We laughed at ourselves and our impracticality and rashness. It went unsaid, but deep-down we knew that it was best we were sitting on this couch and not surprising two girls late at night and all alone. Time with girls, dating, driving, adulthood – all that would come, we knew. No need to rush it. It took landing in a ditch on our heads to teach us some patience, but we got it. I don’t remember if we finished the wine, but after a bit we chucked the bottles deep into the woods, the grand misadventure ended. We rolled out our sleeping bags and went to sleep.

April never found out about our attempted trek to her house. We never brought it up. But Brian and I continue to laugh about it, and sometimes, when I shave, I think about that kid with the fake beard. What a maroon.

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