by Domenic Luciani

Created on: August 15, 2009

It's been a long been a long time since that day. In a way, it haunts me, and yet, at the same time the memory of it makes me laugh. It was a nice summer evening. I was fifteen. my two friends; Zach and Andrew were inseparable back in the days. We played around the quiet neighborhoods around ours, getting into trouble and indulging in childish pleasures.

"Hey, what do you want to do tonight?"

"I don't know, what do you want to do?"

This was the basis of every single one of our conversations. A back and forth talk, trying to figure out what would serve as a good time. We spent a good half hour walking around Andrew's house, opening cabinets we've already opened countless times in search of food. Finally, boredom got the best of us.

"Lets go ding-dong-ditching." Zach finally suggested.

Andrew and I wanted to disagree, but there was honestly nothing else to do. "Sure" we decided.

We returned to our homes in order to change into darker clothes. We met in the street outside and began our journey across the park over to a separate street that would be tonight's victims.

A hot blooded feeling rose in our veins as we selected the first target. A cozy little house with a single light on upstairs. It was perfect. We chose who would be the ringer: Andrew, then Zach and I hid across the street in a garden that provided cover amongst the bushes. Crouched low, and became nearly invisible pieces of the garden's sillouette. Andrew made his way cautiously over to the house and rang the bell. He was quic on his feet, and was gone in a flash.

A few seconds passed, then a man came out of the house. He looked maybe in his mid-twenties. Anyway, he looked strong, and if he saw us, we were dead.

I heard Zach crouch even lower in the garden, so did I.

The man wasn't finished. He walked back into the house quickly, then returned with a flash light. This was not good. The man looked around, he didn't see us. Then he checked the bushes around his house. Then we became fearful as the man looked around back, where Andrew had gone. the man vanished from sight.

Zach and I held our breaths. The whole world seemed like it was waiting the outcome of the man's search.

Then he rounded the corner again, checked around in his bush's again, then disappeared inside his house. We met back up with Andrew a little ways down the street five minutes later. We joked about it, but we were all shaken. We continued to shred the piece of the night with our joy.

at the end of the night, we laughed about the things we did, among them being: two more ding-dong-ditches, everyone on that street had put their garbage out on the street for the collection the next day, so Andrew Zach and I, took it upon ourselves to move it all into their respective backyards, also, an odd asortment of potted plants and lawn statues mysteriously vanished, (in a jungle gym behind someone's house) and A massive lawn birdhouse magically moved itself to the roof of somebody's car.

We were having a wonderful time, and decided to take another trip down a sidestreet. There we messed with two more houses, and finished up the night with moving some electric fence flags around into a shape (that was slightly inappropriate) on some unsuspecting man's lawn.

We calmly walked back to our houses tired from the night and ready to get back into bed. We almost made it too.

That was until we saw blue and red flashing lights behind us, and two police cars parked on the driveway in front of us.

No, the night was far from over.

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