The scene of the crime... (Sealed with a court order, Pt. II)

The other day I started to share a story about how I learned that juvenile records are sealed and can't be gone into ever. In setting up that story I got as far as revealing that, upon attempting to enlist in the military I discovered that the government telling a naïve teenager, "we promise we'll never tell anyone about this," is akin to a football team telling a naïve cheerleader the same thing. In both cases the secret is good only so long as there's no upside to sharing it.

So it was bound to happen that one day the United States Navy was going to ask the City of Oneida if it had any good dirt on me, and the City of Oneida was going to blab. Fortunately for naïve cheerleaders everywhere, football teams keep lousy records. Unfortunately for me, cities keep pretty good ones.

There I sat, across the desk from Chief Warrant Officer I-Caught-You-In-A-Lie, staring at the folder he'd just shoved across the desk. It was a bit like one of those TV interrogation room moments, only without the cool soundtrack to help you know how to feel about what's happening. Fortunately, I knew exactly how to feel about it, with or without music.

"What can you tell me about this incident?"

(Bum-dum-DA-dummmmm!)

The folder contained various legal-looking documents, including police reports, court documents, and some rather impressive looking crime scene photos. I will ruin some of the suspense at this point and disclose that they were far more impressive than the actual crime warranted. No, I didn't eat my high school track coach. No, I didn't make a patchwork quilt of the local ladies sewing circle. My brief foray into violent crime was more of a creative outlet, than a way to vent any pent up rage or a desire to do any real harm.

You know how you always hear people whining about how kids are influenced by the violence they see on TV? Well, it turns out that, according to my admittedly limited personal research at least, there's some validity to their complaint. Given the opportunity and a sufficient level of boredom, I think kids will act on just about anything you put in their brains, up to a limit set by their personal moral compass. (In my defense, I believe someone had parked a rather large magnet next to mine that day.) Had my step-brother, Jim, and I spent the evening before watching The Sound of Music, we probably would have spent the afternoon skipping around the hillsides, singing, and dodging natzis. As luck would have it, the feature presentation the night before was "Helter Skelter."

Faced with a boring afternoon alone, we somehow decided it would be cool to see what we could mix up in the kitchen. We hit upon the idea of making fake blood, and after a few false starts, came up with a nice viscous, dark red liquid which we loaded into a few sandwich baggies and an empty dish soap squirt bottle.

Well, once you've made fake blood, you can't just sit there and look at it, you know? So, we needed to find something to do with it. We headed out into the neighborhood, and made our way into the open field across the street. There we yanked up dead corn stalks and had fun swinging them around and launching them—heavy dirt and root ball first—into the air; sort of a poor man's hammer toss. At some point this too became boring, and we still needed to find something fun to do with our fake blood.

It was about then that one or both of us noticed a particularly white garage which backed up to the field. We launched a few corn stalks at it, and the dirt balls exploded against the side like dusty black fireworks. Then one went through a window. (I'm still not sure to this day whether that first window was broken by accident or intent.) We hit the ground, hearts pounding for fear of the repercussions, but no one came running to see what had been broken.

Sociologists have written at length about the "broken window effect," which states that if you go into any neighborhood, break a window, and leave it broken, crime will rise. I am at this very moment, writing at length to tell you that this effect can also be instantaneous, because for some reason the fact that nobody responded when we broke that first window suddenly made it seem like a good idea to break some more. All of them, in fact. We threw corn stalks through every window of that nice tidy white garage. And then we remembered the fake blood. We threw the baggies at the walls so they splattered like the downwind view of a shotgun blast to the head. I used the squirt bottle to scrawl the words, "Helter Skelter," across the siding, and admired my horror-show handiwork as the letters ran and dripped.

Then we ran home and had a snack. (Mayhem makes kids hungry.)

So there you have the details of what was in that sealed folder. Of course, I still haven't described the actual time at which I learned about sealed juvenile records. I guess that'll just have to wait for part three.