Mark Tufo: A Plague Upon Your Family

You know I went back. It’s in my nature. This time it wasn’t with a tire iron. I had made a Molotov cocktail out of some gas and shampoo poured into a coke bottle. My friends had told me ‘I was crazy’ and ‘You’re not going to do it’. So, you know of course, all that really does is incite somebody above and beyond normal stupidity into super stupidity. I was a fast kid, I played half back for the freshman team. How fast was about to be tested.

I went a little further in the woods, away from the cops and emerged from a spot where they could not see my egress. As I walked back up the road towards the school I tried my best to act as innocent as possible. I knew they were watching me. I could feel it. They wanted me to do something wrong just as bad as I wanted to. My first step off the relative safety of the sidewalk and onto the lawn of the school had the police on high alert. My time was short. I pulled out my trusty Bic. The first flick of flame ignited the gas soaked rag immediately. I was momentarily stunned by the flash of fire. The cops however, were not. Their car popped into drive and the engine revved followed almost instantaneously by their headlights turning on. I was bathed in headlights. The iridescent blues and reds sent me hauling ass.

I ran as close to the wreck as I dared, reaching back for all I was worth I hurled the bottle at the car, hoping that I hadn’t missed and have it hit anticlimactically on a tire, or sail harmlessly overhead landing on the soft grass. Neither of those things happened as the bottle smashed throat first into the rear quarter panel. The ensuing fireball probably saved my ass as the cops sheared off from their intercept course.

I’ll give them this though, they recovered quickly and were once again in hot pursuit. At one point the bumper of the cop car actually touched my ass. If I had stumbled there wouldn’t have been a thing in the world he could have done to avoid running me down, like some common criminal, which I guess I was now. When I got to the end of the school grounds I was met with an eight foot high chain link fence. Now remember, I was 16 and in great shape, one jump had me three quarters up and my body was half over the top when the cop car fishtailed to a stop directly underneath me.

The cop actually had the nuts to yell at me to stop. I told him to fuck off as I retreated into the woods. I was semi-surprised he hadn’t shot me. The car was towed off the grounds the very next day.

Talbot – 1, Cops - 0

TALBOTSODE #2

At the ripe old age of 17, having not learned a damn thing from the smashed up car in the previous story, I decided to leave a party I was at, bad idea. I was closer to four sheets to the wind when I decided that I needed to go to my house and grab my marijuana paraphernalia. Must have been 10 different bowls at that party to smoke out of, but NO I had to have mine. So I got behind the wheel of my car and luckily, not a 100 yards from where I started, I smashed into a curb. It blew out my right front tire. I grabbed the keys out of the car, opened the trunk and then drunkenly scattered everything I had in my trunk on the ground around the car.

I couldn’t find the jack to save my life. Although looking back, not finding the jack probably did save my life and someone else’s. I must have been making a hell of a racket because someone yelled out their window that I should just leave because they had called the cops. I might have mumbled something incoherently back to them, but in my addled brain all I could think was that I’d better change this tire quick before they got here.

Now I don’t know if it was a slow night at the old Police station or I blacked out somewhere along the line but the Boys were at the scene in what seemed like a heartbeat.

“Son, you need to stop what you’re doing right now,” The cop said to my back. How I missed the glaring lights on the top of his car is not really all that much of a mystery.

I stood up smacking my head on the trunk lid as I did so. ‘Stuff’ was littered in a semi circle around my position, there was an empty cooler, a lawn chair, a blanket or two, a bunch of clothes, most were not mine, no clue, and the jack. I stared down at it like it had just materialized.

“Son why don’t you put that stuff back in the car.” The cop said to me, by now his partner had rolled up in another squad car.

I’ve got to admit I was pretty impressed with myself that I hadn’t said anything stupid up to this point. I just kind of bent at the waist, wobbled a bit and put all the stuff back. ‘Stupid jack.’ I mumbled as if that were the root of all my evil.

Another squad car rolled up. “Why don’t you come over here son so we can do a field sobriety check.”

“Sounds good.” I answered him. At least those were the words I intended, I think ‘Smoods gound.’ Came out.

“Okay son, I want you to walk heel to toe for ten steps.” And then he proceeded to show me the technique to perform this magic routine. It’s kind of like when you go to a carnival and the carnie working the booth where you have to stand the coke bottle up with the ring attached to a rope on the end of a stick demonstrates the proper techniques. He does it like five times in a row. So you figure when you hand him over your five bucks you’ve got this thing in the bag and your girlfriend is going to be so happy. Maybe just maybe, you’ll get second base under the shirt instead of over. What you don’t realize is that the ring on the end of your rope is slicked with Vaseline and you have absolutely no chance of ever winning that teddy bear or of feeling Suzy’s tits.

So that was the same perspective I had when I went into the sobriety test. The moment I placed the heel of my left foot onto the toe of my right I lost all sense of equilibrium. The cop had to literally catch me as the ground rose up to meet me.

“That’s far enough son.” Was followed immediately by handcuffs.

I was being fingerprinted when my mother came to the station to bail me out.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Were her first words to me.

Mine to her. “Who are you?” I was that gone, that’s no exaggeration. I didn’t recognize my own mother. How far down the rabbit hole do you have to be for that to happen? I had dodged a bullet by having to take the keys out of the ignition to open the trunk. In a newer model of car, had I had a switch to open the trunk, my charge would have gone from public intoxication to DUI.

Talbot – 1, Cops – 1

TALBOTSODE #3

The next story isn’t earth shattering, more of another slice in the pie. I was somewhere in the 18 year old range and a gaggle of us had gone up to New Hampshire camping. It was one of those lost weekends you spend with friends, laughing partying having a great time, kids being kids. So now it’s Sunday afternoon and we’re heading back down I-95 to Massachusetts and of course we’re drinking. That’s what you do as stupid kids. At least this time I wasn’t driving or attempting to do so. The driver of the van I was in, needed to stop and do what any beer drinker does, pee. So we pull into this rest stop for a break and someone pulls out a Frisbee. We spread out in the parking lot of this rest area and just start playing some catch. Nothing that so far was going to get me on the FBI’s most wanted.

So my buddy Kevin throws me this wicked long pass. I chase it down and snag it one handed. The other hand was wrapped firmly around a Budweiser. I turn back around smiling only to witness the six people I was playing with whipping their, what I could only imagine were full bottles of beer into the woods. I was like ‘WTF’ is going on as I took a long pull from mine.

“How old are you son?”

I turned, bottle still to mouth, a cop in a cruiser was inches from me.