Hey all!

Once in a while, one finds themselves at a junction in their lives where one must (is forced really) rely on ones wit, nerves, and gumption in order to survive a potentially dangerous and embarrassing situation. This story is NOT one of those times. It’s embarrassing, actually. Luckily, several people were embarrassed, so at least I wasn’t alone in the mess. Furthermore, I ended up with a good friend at the end, so this sort of has a happy ending.

It started off innocently enough. It was a typical dreary Sunday in Warren, Ohio, land of foreclosed houses and liquid cheese. Sacrament meeting had just let out, so the hallway was filled with a multitude of merrily miserable Mormons shuffling toward their respective classrooms for Sunday school. I had just turned 14 and was off to my class to sit for an hour and experience age-appropriate indoctrination. I was still going to Seminary at this point, so I had grown accustomed to, and learned how to ignore the looks of derision from the other Mormon boys. Because my family were known drinkers, smokers, and indulgers of coffee there was always a low grumbling amongst the others and as such I never felt that I fit in. Luckily for me, that would all change on this wonderful, somewhat horrific day.

My face was cast down at the floor, focusing on the flecks of mud that dotted my Wal-Mart loafers. I was trying to avoid eye contact with my Ward for many reasons, one of them being that I had just exposed myself in an alarming fashion at the Columbus temple earlier that month. The buzz of the Ward shuffling around me filled my ears. My mind was preoccupied in replaying that horrific experience in my brain when I collided with something bony and rickety.

Two crusty bootleg Adidas sneakers turned toward me as I brought my gaze upward to their owner. Standing in front of me was a very skinny, very angry young man with shoulder length red hair. His eyes cut through me like saw blades and his thin lips curled around a mouth of stained and crooked teeth.

(A Warren, Ohio exclusive!)

“S…sorry,” I mumbled to him. His fiery glare fixed on me.

“What?” he shot back. “What for?”

“I…well, I bumped into you just now.”

“No you didn’t,” he replied.

“Yeah, I th…think I did,” I stuttered. His thin lips curled into a grin. Was he fucking with me?

“No, you didn’t,” he said commandingly. “You didn’t bump into me. Your fat ass almost knocked me out. I almost landed in a coma because of you. You should lose some weight so you don’t kill anyone else.”

The hot fires of embarrassment washed over me. I was overweight at the time and rather sensitive about the fact. It bothered me. I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t. However, something else about what he said bothered me even more.

“I didn’t kill you,” I said.

“What?”

“You said, ‘I should lose some weight before I kill someone else,’ but I didn’t kill you. Your still alive…as far as I know.” His grin faded.

“Also,” I added, “if you were in a coma you wouldn’t be dead. You’d just…you know…be in a coma.”

His wiry frame stepped closer to mine. His pushed his face through my personal space bubble and into the weird-and-creepy realm of closeness. I could smell his breath…I could smell…COFFEE.

“Listen,” he said with his reeking coffee breath, “I will kill you, your mom, your dad, your whole mission loving family if you mess with me. Got it?”

“Dude, is that coffee on your breath?” The buzz in the hallway stopped. All eyes turned to the wiry redhead standing in my personal bubble. He turned toward the disappointed gaze of a hundred merry Mormons. With a swish, he was off, leaving me standing against the wall with the lingering smell of coffee breath in my nostrils.

That was fucking weird, I thought as I headed to my class. I had never sent that kid before in my life. He was close to me in age, perhaps a bit older, but I had never seen him at any church functions before. Was he new? Was he visiting? Perhaps not. Perhaps he was Catholic. Is that why the Elders in the church didn’t want us to mix with them? I hadn’t expected to do this much thinking on a Sunday.

I went through my class in an anxious haze. Those angry, pissed eyes kept flashing in my brain. The smell of his coffee breath hit me every time I took a breath. Fear, anger, and tension played kickball with my stomach and before I had the opportunity to gather my thoughts, class was over. It was time to go back into the shuffle, back to the sea of people that might hold…HIM!

My eyes were fixed before me in a paranoid scan of the hallway. They darted back and forth, searching only the way that terrified eyes could. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I am seriously jealous of you. All my senses were heightened as the anxiety lounged in my chest. Every step I took, I swore that I could hear something following me, a swishing rattling sound. What the hell was that? Don’t turn around, I thought. Don’t give him a reason to start shit. It’s all in your head.

Step step, swish swish. Step step, swish swish. I could hear it. I was certain. The halls were beginning to thin. I could feel the warmth of anonymity giving way to the cold reality of focus. He was there. I could hear him.

“I figured this was safer,” he said. Swish, swish.

“What?” I replied, still not facing him.

Swish swish. “Walking behind you.” Swish swish.

What the hell was that sound? Curiosity got the best of me. I turned to face him. His crusty bootleg Adidas shoes anchored his wiry frame smack dab in the middle of the hallway. His crooked smile worked it’s way out from underneath his red hair. In his hand was a weathered and beaten old hacky sack which he absentmindedly tossed and caught. Swish swish.

“I think we got off on the wrong foot,” I said, trying to quell the shaking in my hands. “I don’t know what happened, but I’d like to be friends.”

“Yeah?” he said. “That’s nice. Friends are nice.”

“Yeah, they are.” Was he fucking with me again?

“You know what’s cool about friends?” he asked with a twitch in his smile.

“No.”

“Friends don’t rat on you when you have coffee breath,” he whispered.

“Look, I drink coffee too. It’s not that big a deal. Everything’s good,” I said, bracing myself for a fistfight I was certain would come.

He waved the hacky sack at me. “Yeah, well I guess friends also give friends second chances. So that’s what I’m going to give you. A big ol’ fat second chance.”

“That’s…good?” I said with an uncertain smile.

He nodded and held out his hand in such a way that he looked like a thin, pale, redheaded version of Don Corleone. I approached with trepidation. He might still hit me with that hand. Well, I thought, I’ve been hit before. At least I won’t have to wonder anymore.

“Here, this is for you,” he said as he hshook his balled fist. I put my hand out and he dropped a tiny misshapen lump into my hand. I looked down at it, wondering what the hell was going on.

“Um, you want me to throw this away for you?” I asked curiously.

“No, you idiot!” he said in a hushed tone. “Don’t you know what that is? Throwing that awa is like throwing away gold!”

I looked down at the mishappen gray lump and rolled it around in my hand. “You don’t say?”

He sighed. “Obviously you aren’t cool enough to know what that is, so I guess I have to tell you.” He leaned in close and scanned the hallway for wandering ears. I mimicked him, hopeful to show my friendliness.

“That,” he said, “is a crack rock.”

My heart sank as the dread filled me. I felt sick to my stomach and instantly broke out in guilt sweats. A FUCKING CRACK ROCK?! IN CHURCH?! Hmm, how do you play this one off, my mind asked as I disassociated from myself. How might you get out of this situation with your dignity in tact with only a minor blemish on your legal record? As I slipped furthur and further into terror the redhead with the crooked smile wrangled me back to reality.

“You OK?” he asked with uncharacteristic concern.

“Fine!” I said as I wiped the beads of sweat from my upper lip. “It’s all good.”

“Ok,” he said as he snapped back into character. “Good. See, I’m a big time drug lord and I don’t need no snitches telling on me. Got that?”

I nodded.

“Good. So, here’s what you gotta do if you want to be cool with me. You listening?”

I nodded.

“You gotta…you know…DO THAT CRACK!”

“Like, smoke it?” I asked. “I don’t have a crack pipe. Could I borrow one?”

“DUMBASS!” he cringed. “You don’t smoke crack! I mean you could, but that’s not how this crack is supposed to go.”

“Ok,” I replied, “how is this crack supposed to go?”

He turned shiftily towards the bathroom, grinning malevolently. “You gotta go in there and chew it up and swallow it. It’s gonna taste terrible. You’ll probably go insane, but if you do this we’ll be cool.” I was starting to wonder if a person who would willingly give away crack for free was the type of person I would benefit from being cool with.

“Ok,” I sighed. “I will go into the bathroom and chew up this crack rock.”

A wide grin broke out over his face. He kicked open the door to the bathroom and flipped on the lights. As I made my way in he swished his hacky sack, chuckled and said, “Have a nice trip!”

The door shut behind me with a proper ‘thunk’ and I immediately went to work checking all the stalls for occupants, hoping for any excuse to rush out of the bathroom and away from this crazy crack-rock catastrophe I had gotten myself into. My paranoid mind raced with possible outcomes to this activity. What if there is a massive run on the bathroom and every single male that holds the priesthood finds me in the bathroom gnawing on a crack rock like a degenerate? What might Mom say about that?

To my right was a door that led to the Baptismal Font. That would be a really great place to chew my crack rock, I thought. I could shut the door and nobody would know I was in there. It was usually locked, but at some point the door had become warped and the latch no longer lined up properly. I nudged the door and it swung open with a graceful calm. It was apparent that Heavenly Father wanted me to chew my crack rock in peace.

(Baptism by crack rock)

I climbed the steps into the Baptismal Font and slid the door shut. It was pitch black except for a small sliver of light that peeped through the bottom of the door, just enough to illuminate the misshapen lump in my hand. So this is what I had been reduced to; preparing myself to crunch down on a crack rock in a baptismal font? Well, I sighed, best to get it over with and move on. I popped the grey misshapen lump into my mouth and chomped down with my molars. A horrific jabbing pain in my gums accompanied a loud cracking sound emanating from my mouth.

“Fuck!” I exclaimed. “This hurts my teeth! That must be why it’s called a crack rock.” I chomped a bit more, hoping that extra saliva might soften the illicit substance. No dice. It remained as hard as The Simpsons game for Nintendo. I spit out the lump into the palm of my hand. It was even more misshapen now with teeth marks and saliva dotting it. People do this for fun? Why not just eat a burger and take a nap? I crawled out of the baptismal font and back into the bathroom. I inspected the lump in my hand. This isn’t worth it, I thought. I slipped over to the toilet and tossed the lump into the water and kicked the flusher. Maybe the alligators that lived in the sewer might have a better time getting high on crack than I did.

It was at this point that I realized that since I did not ingest the crack rock, I would not be high. Natrually, a big time drug dealer like the redhead would probably know that I had not ingested it and call me out. So, in a move acted out of self-preservation, I had to figure out a convincing crack walk to pass muster. Luckily, I went to public school, so I knew what real crack heads looked and walked like. Usually they would be between the houses or in the empty lot across from the school, crouched behind a pile of tires, smoking the crack rather than chewing it. I had been able to mimic their walk pretty well as a gag in the fourth grade, so I pulled it out of my bag of tricks. I clenched my teeth like a caveman, kicked one foot sideways, acted like one leg was longer than the other, and popped my eyes open as wide as they could go. Granted, I looked less like a crack head and more like Igor, but all I needed was for it to be kind of passable.

I went towards the door with my crack head walk in order and turned the handle. Waiting outside was the redhead, his hacky sack bouncing off of his bootleg Adidas. Now was the time. I stepped my crooked foot out into the hallway when suddenly it erupted with the sound of opening doors, mingled conversations, and shuffling feet. The redhead bounced his hacky sack between his feet, but he faltered and launched his hackey sack into the filling crowd. He lunged for it, but it was too late. It wound up under the cane of a woman in her early 80’s. The bamboo cane ripped into the cheap fabric of the hacky sack, spilling out hundreds of tiny misshapen grey lumps. Not lumps, CRACK ROCKS!

“DUDE, HOW MANY CRACK ROCKS DO YOU HAVE?!” I exclaimed in shock. I froze mid-step in my crack head walk. The redhead’s face grew white with dread. The whole ward stopped in their place, their eyes once again trained on the two of us. A figure from the crowd made his way forward, pushing the old lady aside and towering over the two of us. Our once jovial Bishop now looked at us sternly.

He looked at the redhead, looked at me, and looked down at the hundreds of crack rocks scattered across the floor. He shook his head in disappointment. “Both of you, come to my office. Now!”

We sat side by side across from the Bishop, both of us doing our best to keep our eyes firmly fixed on the floor. The Bishop eyed us both. Scattered across the desk were about twenty or so of the crack rocks that spilled out of the hacky sack. In all of this I felt a strange sense of relief that I didn’t have to resort to my fourth grade crack head walk after all.

“John,” he said to the redhead, “were you selling crack rocks again?”

John shifted uncomfortably. “No sir.” The Bishop eyeballed me.

“It’s true,” I said, “he didn’t sell me the crack rock. I grabbed it from him.” John looked up, surprised. “I’ll take the consequences.”

The Bishop stood up behind his desk and picked up one of the crack rocks. “John, we’ve talked about you lying to people. Heavenly Father looks down on liars. Here you are, trying to pass off hacky sack beads as crack!”

“Excuse me?” I blurted out. “What was that?”

“That crack rock you took from him was actually a hacky sack bead,” said the Bishop. “It’s a bit of plastic that he’d been kicking around in that nasty ball for lord knows how long.”

I turned slowly to John. His face was the same shade as his hair, which led to a bizarre effect. He sort of looked like a fire hydrant. “You gave me a plastic hacky sack bead to chew on? You…BUTT!” I crossed my arms in disgust. John chuckled slightly.

“Well, it’s at least reassuring that neither of you know what crack looks like. Thank the lord for that,” shrugged the Bishop. “Ok, the both of you go home. No more crack rocks, you hear?”

In the hallway I turned to John and grimaced. He gave me a sheepish smile from under his red hair. “Look,” he started, “I was just messing with you. I thought you were, you know, one of them.”

“Well, I’m not,” I said. “There are better ways to find out than offering someone fake crack rocks.”

He nodded. “I guess. Well, I gotta go. I’ll see you next week.”

“Yeah,” I nodded, “Later.”

And that, folks, is how I met my best friend Crack Rock Johnny.

Till next time!