When I was about 14, my brother and I decided that it was time to throw tomatoes at cars driving past our house at night. I'm not sure why this seemed like a good idea at the time, but of course, we were bored boys growing up in Cow Hampshire. Neither of us could drive, but even if we could, there was nowhere to go. Idle hands, they say, are most dangerous when they belong to adolescent boys. Don't they say that? Oh. Well, they should.
I'm not exactly sure when Todd and I hatched the idea to peg passing cars with produce, but I do know this: we weren't very cunning. First of all, we hid ourselves behind grapevines...in front of our own house. Some would call that stupid. I would call it stupid too. Secondly, we used tomatoes from my father's garden. Did he notice? Yes, he did. Some would call that....right. You get it. We were stupid-ass kids.
So Todd and I spent the day like any other day in Londonderry, New Hampshire:
We went to school on the bus, sitting in different seats and with different friends. If you don't have a sibling, you may not be familiar with the strange dynamic that comes into play when your brother or sister is so close in age and at the same school. Although Todd and I were very close friends most times, things changed from the moment we got on the bus until the moment we got off the bus at the end of the school day. He had his friends and I had mine and we were separated by two grades. There wasn't much reason to chat during school except perhaps to nod to each other between classes in the hallway. Even then, we often passed each other unnoticed. In retrospect, that's kind of sad, but only because absence makes the heart grow forgetful. (They say that too, right?) Todd and I were close friends, but as is the case with most Irish twins, we often argued growing up. I was a bit of a bully, I suppose, and he was a bit of a wiseass. That's a volatile combination. He has an amazing ability to know the exact thing to say to make you the most angry at any given point. He would make me so mad that my words would fail and I would instead revert to whaling on him. Nothing violent usually, just annoying things like sitting on his chest and poking him repeatedly in the sternum until I felt better about whatever he said to infuriate me. (Of course, once Todd shot past me in height, the day of me whaling on him ended forever.) But, I digress. Back to tomatoes.
After school, Todd and I became friends again, usually as the bus was pulling down Sparhawk Rd. We would team up in acorn fights against the Chamberlain kids or play street baseball with John Cox and Dave Wood. Some days, we'd work on our "fort" in the back woods that was mostly made of leftover rotten wood or construction site castoffs. Todd and I often played in the woods behind our house, setting elaborate boobie traps for neighbor kids, swinging from an old rope swing or damming up the creek behind our neighborhood. "Once below a time we lordly had the trees and leaves."
As night fell on Londonderry, Todd and I agreed that chucking tomatoes at passing cars would be fun. We picked a spot right in front of our house and hid behind the grapevines lining the homemade fence that my dad built. Several cars passed before Todd and I had the courage to throw our father's tomatoes at one. On Sparhawk Road, several cars can take an hour. It's not exactly a main thoroughfare, and if either of us had given our plan a second of thought, we might have realized that the only people who drive through neighborhoods at night are...well...NEIGHBORS.
Mr. Savina lived down the street from us. Two houses down to be exact. His son, Chris, was the kid in school who first solved Rubik's Cube. He was incredibly intelligent and as soon as word spread that someone had cracked the multi-colored puzzle, kids would line up on the bus with cubes in hand to have them solved by this genius. He happily obliged. Other than that, I knew nothing about their family. They lived close to us, but sometimes you just don't get to know the people right around you in life.
He slammed on the brakes as the tomato exploded on his windshield. For a brief moment, Todd and I froze. Neither of us had really thought this far ahead, so we didn't know what to do now that our "plan" was complete. Finally, after what seemed like a full minute, I screamed, "RUN!"
We hid in the woods. Again, we chose to hide behind our own house. Todd and I were mischievous, but apparently, we weren't very bright. Mr. Savina threw the car in reverse, pulled directly in front of our house, and looked around. I'm guessing it took him about 10 seconds to figure out exactly what had happened. In the woods, Todd and I sat trembling with fear and excitement. Getting caught was never part of the plan, but holy crap, "Did you see that thing hit?" I whispered to him. "Yeah," he laughed in a whisper that was still out of breath.
He came to our house the next day. We heard the doorbell ring and peeked out to see who it was. Todd and I panicked when we saw that it was him. Obviously, we did not answer the door. We were stupid, but we weren't MORONS. Mr. Savina peeked in through the window. He wasn't buying the "we're not home" thing. He cupped his hands to the small translucent window on our front door and screamed, "I'll be calling your parents!" With that, he walked back home.
For weeks, Todd and I panicked every time the phone rang. We worried incessantly. Both of us came up with the stories we would tell if confronted. We went out of our way to be home to jump on the phone if it rang. It loomed over our lives for months.
He never called. I'm not sure if he knew that the threat of calling was much more impactful than an actual call or if he just cooled down and gave up on the idea. We would have been in deep shit if he had called my parents, but it was far worse to worry about it for months. My dad noticed the smashed tomatoes I think, although I'll tell you the truth, I may be imagining that part.
I have no idea what happened to the Savinas. They moved away at some point and faded off of the landscape in Londonderry. I have no doubt that Chris is probably living off of stock options from some tech company that he started before a successful tech company meant bazillionaire-ville. I hope so. And I hope Mr. Savina has forgiven Todd and I for doing something stupid and potentially life-threatening. We were stupid kids. We paid for our error in fear of "the call." It eventually became a running joke that represented bad news in general.
"Guess what?"
"What?"
"Mr. Savina called."
"NO!"
"No. I jive."
{relieved sigh}
Wherever you are Mr. Savina, sorry about the tomato thing. It was stupid, we were stupid, and we actually DID learn our lesson. That's something.
