Back in 1987 when I was in first grade my dad had an awesome white van. I’m pretty sure it was a 1978 Econoline or something (the kind of van that lester the molester would always try to get me into by offering me HiC juice boxes and giant bags of Halloween candy in mid-July even though I was too smart for him but my buddy Burt wasn’t) but to me, it was the Space Van that ran on Superfuel that was mined on the moon. By a Cyclops and a buncha moon men.
Hey, I was in first grade and most of my spare time was spent reading comics and playing legos and watching Doctor Who. Because, well… you know. I was fat.
So when one day I missed the school bus because I was watching Smurfs or GI Joe or whatever the crap was on at 7am on a school day when I should have been having a complete breakfast consisting of toast, eggs and orange juice and my dad was screaming “GET YOUR PASTY ASS DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW OR I’M GONNA COME GET YOU WITH MY HAMMER, SHITHEAD”.
Well, because I WAS being a SHITHEAD my dad had to drive me to school. Which was OK by me since it involved getting a ride on the awesomeshuttle. And I’d be able to use the super-fuel weapons in the armory (the drills and hand tools in the back. I remember that I used a tire pressure gauge as a makeshift “sonic screwdriver” and the shopvac was a “proton cannon”). When we got outside… right outside our house… not even around the corner but RIGHT OUTSIDE LITERALLY IN FRONT OF OUR HOUSE where the van usually sits because that’s where my dad would park it… it was gone.
Now my dad’s walking up and down the block thinking that he may have forgotten where he parked it. I mean, he was sort of known as an absent-minded professor. He’d been known to forget that he was wearing his glasses. Also, when he met my sister-in-law for the first time he was so excited that he didn’t realize he was wearing a cowboy boot and a sneaker. Each on the wrong foot.
Well, thinking that the van was gone, my dad knew he’d never get it back because the police where useless and lazy and didn’t see fit to call them. Also I needed to get to school because… I don’t know. I never thought school was important and I always felt that I learned more watching Donahue and also the semi-educational TV on PBS. But I didn’t make the rules since I was only 7 so off we went to the bus stop to take Public Transit to my school.
A little “aside”: I grew up in a poor Hispanic neighborhood. My house was on a street where the cross streets on one end of the block were lined with “low income housing” and the other was crack houses. My block was quiet, and low crime etc but surrounding it? Pure ghetto. That’s how Staten Island was in the 80’s.
Why is that important? Because it explains why a Middle-class white family lived in a neighborhood where there was a majorly notorious chop-shop right on a main street. In fact, THE main street on Staten Island.
And yes… the van was parked right in the parking lot.
So my dad tells me to wait at the bus stop and goes in, makes sure it’s his van and starts raising Hell.
I remember a set of socket wrenches flying and a bunch of Albanians running for their lives. I was scared that they’d get some giant with a scimitar like something out of an old Alli Babba movie where the guys where scarfs as belts?
I also remember my dad got a new set of tires and a full tank of gas and a carton of cigarettes outta the deal. And the guy was pleading “please just go”.
I guess that they never heard the expression “don’t shit in your own bed”?
