Place: Raymond, AB
My age: 18
It was a beautiful spring. Winter was behind us. My senior year of high school was nearing a close. The MT Vibes, of which I was a member, were pseudo-celebrities in southern Alberta. Teenagers were being idiots.
It was a Friday or Saturday night, and I was hanging out with my cousins and friends. I don't remember who exactly was with me, but I do know who was there for sure: Neil Oler, Becca Heninger, Noah Heninger, Andrew Oler, and Cindy Porkalab (I'm not sure if I'm spelling that right; I'm just going on how it sounds. Her married name is so much easier). There may have been others, and to them, I apologize for forgetting. You know I love you.
So we were out pretty much wandering aimlessly about a block away from Aunt Joyce's house. We were a fairly well-behaved group of kids, so we weren't making any trouble. There was a jacked-up, dumb-looking pick-up truck stopped at an intersection across the street from us with a few boys my age inside. They turned on the fog lamps on top of the truck, and it was shining right at us. Neil thought the driver was a friend of his dad's, so he raised his fist and shook it at them. (Yes, the title of this entry is a little misleading. Neil didn't actually finger the truck.) The occupants of the truck thought that Neil had fingered them, and they started yelling obscenities at us, and before any of us could really react, the truck launched forward straight at us. Instead of standing our ground (there were four guys in our group, and a maximum of three guys in the truck), we ran. There's just something about a powerful engine driving a 1/2 ton truck bearing down on you that makes the flight instinct overpower the fight instinct.
Our retreat emboldened our pursuers, and they gleefully chased us while flinging insults in our direction. (I had flashbacks of the pickle incident from the previous summer.) We ran through a neighbour's back yard and climbed over a six-foot fence, which had boards running horizontally to help us up and over. When we reached the sidewalk in front of the house, the truck appeared and came in our direction again, so we turned and headed back to the fence we had just climbed. I was the first one there and saw that this side of the fence had no horizontal boards to act as a makeshift ladder. I didn't let that stop me. Showing an athleticism that only manifests itself when I am in peril, I planted my hands on top of the fence and vaulted over it like an army recruit in an obstacle course. I made sure everyone else was able to follow me, all the while with the occupant of the house yelling at us to get off of his property before he called the cops. If I remember correctly, Becca said, "Yes, please, call the cops" before I offered a hurried apology and ran for Joyce's house. There was a large shop that Uncle Duane used to keep his motorbikes, and we hid out there. The truck hadn't seen where we went, and so we lost them.
The driver of the truck turned out to be Todd Fraser, who I used to hang out with in grade six. He didn't realize that I was one of the people he chased.
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