I have done a lot of really dumb things in this sorted life of mine. Tons. Most of them were harmless. Of the ones that were severe or ones that could have life-long consequences, those have mostly been smoothed over by the passing of time. I can honestly say I do not have that many regrets. A handful or so, because we all do. Most of the time I can bury those in the back of my mind and only visit them in a waking dream, but there is one that comes to me every single time it is cold. Every time. And every time I feel just as awful about it as I did when it happened.
In high school, I had a few electives to choose from. When I say a few I mean just that. It was either band, weight lifting, home economics, or school newspaper. I couldn’t be in the band because of prior traumas of getting locked in a drum case for a few hours. I had a problem lifting a five-pound bag of dog food, so weightlifting was out. Home Economics seemed like a fun time but by the time I signed up, it was full. I was left with the newspaper/ writing class.
This writing class was one of those rare, unstructured, free-for-all classes where it was a mixture of every grade and there were no hard and fast rules or curriculum. I hated the writing part of it, but I lived for the chaos. Basically, you just were supposed to write and get the newspaper out, as long as you got that done it didn’t matter if you did anything from sleeping the entire time to giving yourself homemade prison tattoos.
Once a year this class did a fundraiser to get the money to cover the costs of printing the newspaper. The fundraiser was a tradition of sorts. It was called the “Rock-a-thon” and each member of the class took pledges from folks betting if they could make it the entire night sitting in a rocking chair outside a local, pig-themed restaurant.
On the outside, I imagine this seems like an easy way to make money, and I’m sure sometimes it was, but it was always held in February, which in Georgia is a wildcard for the weather. It could be 70 and clear, it could be 20 and raining. When I dragged my wicker rocking chair up to the sidewalk outside of the restaurant it was the latter.
I was with a bunch of friends. We had blankets and food. This was going to be a breeze. We took our seats around five in the afternoon and began to rock away. As it started to get dark the temperature started to fall. We moved the chairs closer to each other and started sharing blankets and telling jokes. At no time did I think this was going to be a problem. The hardest part as I saw it was staying up all night.
Then, sometime before midnight, a large red utility van pulled up and a man popped out of the driver seat wearing a raccoon skin hat and a patchwork leather jacket with half a cigarette and a grin on his face. On the other side, a woman popped out wearing an oversized flannel jacket and a stocking cap. Everyone stared at these strangely dressed travelers waiting to see what was going to happen. I felt the instant and familiar nausea of embarrassment because these were…my parents.
I immediately went into a rage. I had not asked them to come out. It was embarrassing enough for a teenager to have their parents show up to anything unauthorized much less dressed like a fur trapper and person that shovels coal in the bottom of a steam tanker. As I tried to tell them to leave my father goes to the back of the van and pulls out a kettle grill, a bag of charcoal, and bags of fixings for smores, hot dogs, and pretty much anything you could think of roasting on a stick. Everyone watched as I had an absolute meltdown.
Furious at the embarrassment of my parents having the audacity to care enough about me to bring a hobo fire out as I was freezing, I forced them to leave. I don’t remember much from the fog of anger but I can recall throwing a bag of charcoal back in the van and pushing my mother back in her seat. Not sure what happened after that, but they were gone, and it was very, very quiet.
I felt good about my decision. I had stood up to my parents and showed them that I was a man not to be messed with in front of his peers. Then it started to get cold. Real cold. As the hours crept by we all started huddling together. The bag of chips we had between five or so of us had long run out and our stomachs growled. It went from tolerable to miserable quickly. When we were to the point of shivering that started mild convulsions, someone made the astute observation that “if Chris wouldn’t have sent his parents away we’d have a fire right now”. “And food!” someone else piped in. Then someone stole my blanket and I turned myself into a sad little ball of regret for the remainder of the marathon.
When it was over we were treated to breakfast in the restaurant. I was unable to eat anything because I was in a state of shock and hypothermia. I remember my dad asking what was wrong with me when I got home. He knew. He knew that I knew I screwed up. I knew I screwed up. And he knew that I knew that he knew because he gave me that look that only a parent can give when their kid screws up and they get a kick out of it.
I like to think that the laugh he got from my teenage stupidity and arrogance outweighed the way I must have hurt him and my mother when I sent them away as they were trying to do something incredibly thoughtful. I will never know if that was the case. I do know that every time it drops below a certain temperature and I have no jacket or warmth, I start shivering and I rock a little with that regret.