rissy stories

Hey guys,

Here’s a true story about one of the more interesting nights of my life many, many years ago – “Senior Night” for my high school softball team during my sophomore year. We had a lot of crazy traditions and rituals, and this night was no exception.

————————————-

“Alright, you girls don’t do anything stupid tonight, you hear? No broken bones,” Mazza lectured us after the game against Easton ended in a victory. My teammates smirked at one another and looked back at coach.

“No worries,” they replied as we headed towards a big white van with tinted windows that Mr. Brady rented for that night specifically. It was your typical pedophile, “Hey kid, you want some candy?” van that could only fit 8 people, but the poor thing was going hold 13 of us. Julia and Em had to sit on the floor.

We were headed to Red Robin for dinner before stopping by Walmart to pick up supplies, then hitting up KC and Jess’s houses after the sun went down. It was my first Senior Night. I skipped the one freshman year, but none of my teammates would let me skip it sophomore year. And I’m glad they didn’t.

The dinner at Red Robin was tame as it could get with my team – basically eating food and talking about our plans for that night, just killing time until the sun went down.

We headed back to the van and drove over to the nearest Walmart. After we got what we needed, we stood at the entrance of the Walmart with three girls carrying large packages of AngelSoft toilet paper, four boxes of white plastic forks and spoons, and a shit ton of markers. They had decided against carrying any of them in plastic bags for some reason.

“We look like we’re about to steal this,” Joelle commented with a laugh.

“Wait, wait – why don’t we sprint back to the van? Just to freak everyone out,” Courtney asked. Being the goody-two-shoes that I am, I obviously wasn’t up for it, but the rest of the team made the decision without me. All at once, everyone ran out of the Walmart with our supplies, yelling at the top of their lungs.

“Oh shit,” I muttered, quickly caught up, and played along. I still grimaced at all of the pedestrians who quickly dove out of our way in a state of shock and confusion.

“GET IN THE VAN, GET IN THE VAN, GET IN THE VAN,” Joelle yelled, leading us to the white pedophile van where Mr. Brady was still sitting in the front seat, staring at us like we were wild animals about to stampede him to death.

Joelle threw the side door open and everyone practically flew into the van all at once. Mr. Brady threw the van into drive and sped away, completely confused, but laughing along with us. He was one of the “cool” softball parents.

“Please tell me you didn’t actually steal that stuff,” he said once everyone calmed down. Taylor, his daughter, shook her head.

“Nah, we just acted like it,” she reassured him. We then drove for quite a while, just waiting for the sun to fully set. We opened the windows that we could actually open and blasted shitty music from the radio, like Kesha. We sang along gleefully until Mr. Brady pulled into an empty restaurant parking lot. Taylor turned the volume down and everyone asked what he was doing, but he never actually replied.

It became evident as to what his intentions were when everyone started sliding to the right side of the van as he jerked the wheel to the left while pressing the gas at the same time. We screamed and squished up against each other as Mr. Brady drove the van in donuts around this empty parking lot.

Afterwards, the sun finally set, and we were on our way to the first house – KC’s. Joelle had the poster we made for her in hand while everyone else grabbed their share of toilet paper and utensils. Once we pulled up to the neighborhood, we took our shoes off in an attempt to be stealthy. Mr. Brady parked about a block away from the house and all of us filed out and quietly walked to KC’s front yard.

Everyone started sticking the opposite end of the forks and spoons into the moist, cold lawn underneath our feet. Joelle taped the poster to KC’s front door and then we started throwing toilet paper across every surface we could possibly reach. Thankfully it was a nice night and it wasn’t raining.

Once we were finished with our masterpiece, Joelle rang the doorbell and we all sprinted away from the house as fast as we could, giggling and smiling along the way. The asphalt and cement from the sidewalk and road hurt my feet and I sprinted back towards the van.

Once we were all piled in, Mr. Brady drove down KC’s street, where we saw her and her parents in the front yard, looking around at everything. Mr. Brady beeped the horn as we passed her house and then drove off. They waved in response.

While we were on our way to Jess’s house, we hit a little bit of traffic. We were all so riled up from trashing KC’s front yard that when we were at a full stop at a stoplight, Kate opened the van door, sprinted out onto the street, grabbed a bright orange traffic cone, and flung herself back into the van. We screamed, laughed, and bombarded her with questions like: “WHY?”

 She took a sharpie from someone and started drawing on it, saying, “We’re going to sign this and plant it in Jess’s yard. This is hers now.” Meanwhile, Mr. Brady was in the front seat freaking out – he had apparently hit his breaking point.

“You guys do realize that if a cop pulls me over and he sees 13 non-seat-belted kids in an 8-person van, we’re all in serious trouble, right??” he reminded us.

“No worries,” we told him. None of us cared at that point anyways.

The routine at Jess’s house was identical to KC’s, but instead of going home afterwards like we should have, we didn’t want the night to end there. Suddenly, I heard one of us ask,

“Does anyone know where Mazza lives?”

The drill at Mazza’s house was unfortunately NOT similar to KC and Jess’s. Some of the girls end up climbing up onto his roof, and it wasn’t until the next day that we found out Mazza and his wife were in bed at the time, reading, when they heard us. When Jodi asked him what that noise could possibly be, he thought for a moment, then fell back into his bed, groaning:

“It’s them. It’s the girls. They’re on our roof.”

We did not expect Mazza to send his enormously well-built son outside to inspect the situation. Boy did he scare us off. We screamed, piled into the van, and Mr. Brady promptly sped away.

It was at that point, at 2:00 am, that we said: “Okay, let’s go home.”

The next day, Mazza lectured us in the dugout before practice, saying: “Never again. Don’t ever come to my house on Senior Night again.”

We laughed and replied, “No worries.”