Pickle Tossing

Year: 1995
Place: Raymond, Alberta
My age: 17

My cousin Rachel reminded me of this memory recently, and it was such a ridiculous situation that I've decided that it will be the first of my Memories of the '90s.

It was late summer just before my senior year of high school, and I had just moved in with my Aunt Joyce and her three kids, Jake, Becca (who is now Rachel, but since she was Becca at the time, that's how I'll refer to her in this memory), and Noah. It was night, maybe around midnight, and we were bored. Joyce had a large restaurant-sized jar of pickles that had been around for months, and Becca thought they had gone bad. Who knows, maybe they had gone bad. Point is, she was tired of eating them and decided that we should dispose of them creatively.

The creative method of disposal we decided on was to climb onto the roof of Joyce's store on Broadway (Raymond's coincidentally-named main street) and throw the pickles at passersby. Don't worry; we threw them one pickle at a time, not the whole jar at once. We may have been dumb teenagers, but we weren't homicidal. Also, by “we threw them” I mean “Becca threw them.” She was the lightest one of the three of us—Becca, Noah, and myself—so she was the first one on the roof after climbing on my shoulders. Noah and I weren't as spry as she was, and we weren't willing (and possibly not able) to lift each other up. As we looked around for an easier place to climb onto the roof, Becca proceeded with her pickle-bombardment of Broadway. I don't recall how many victims she pickled before deciding to throw a pickle at the windshield of a passing car. The car stopped, and a teenage boy (one of several in the car) got out and examined the object that had defiled his white sedan. “Pickle,” he said in a voice devoid of emotion. He looked up and spotted Becca despite her attempt to hide behind the parapet.

The car started to go around the block. Becca deduced that they were coming around to the alley Noah and I had yet to successfully climb out of.

The car came into the alley. Noah and I were completely oblivious to what had transpired on the roof. But still, I didn't want anyone to find me in a back alley trying to climb onto the roof of a store, so I stood around leisurely facing Noah. Just two dudes hanging out in an alley at midnight. No shenanigans going on here. Nothing gay either, you perverts, so just keep on driving. Geez, we're cousins! Gross!

The car slowed as it passed, the boys inside inspecting us, but it didn't stop and continued on to the end of the alley.

I looked up to the roof as Becca arrived holding out the pickles for me to take. She was hurrying and obviously scared, so I figured that the car had been looking for her and her cohorts. “Oh, crap!” I thought, “those guys are gonna jump us.” Being a non-violent person who had never (and still has never today) been in a fist fight, I joined Becca in her urgent fear as I took the jar of pickles from her.

Handing the jar to Noah, I eloquently (and, in retrospect, hilariously) said, “Noah, takethepicklestakethepicklesTAKETHEPICKLES!!!!” Noah complied, and Becca used my shoulders as her own personal ladder again. She jumped down, took a stumble, got back to her feet, and we started walking away. We didn't get far before we heard a car speeding down the alley towards us.

One of us, most probably me, advised, “Shit! Come on!” I sprinted away, Becca and Noah right behind me, and the car on our tails. I ran through a vacant lot between two businesses and was disappointed to find a fence between us and a not-a-beating. But, ever a survivor, I didn't slow down. The fence had partially collapsed and was leaning towards us. It was maybe three-and-a-half feet high in its drunken state, and I vaulted over it as if I wasn't 20 pounds overweight. Becca and Noah followed me, and, if I remember correctly, Becca fell and scrapped her leg, or something.

I heard the commotion behind me and turned back, but Becca got up on her own and continued running, so I returned to fleeing. At this point, Noah (with, what I can only assume was a silent utterance of “F*** this”) tossed the jar of pickles into a nearby bush.

Our pursuers had to find another way around since their car wasn't equipped with fence-jumping capabilities, and this bought us enough time to dash past the ice arena, the pool, and, under Becca's direction, to her father's house, leaving their brave calls of “You better run, bitch!” behind as they tried to find an alternate route to drive instead of getting out and chasing us on foot, which would have probably resulted in the beating they so anxiously wanted to bestow on us. Instead, we hung out in Larry Heninger's house until it was safe to go home.

Noah retrieved the abandoned pickle jar the next day, and we ate them for another few months.