Crash

Towards the end of June, 2000, I was walking around with my friends, Jason and Ron. It was a warm, aimless summer night, and Jason idly mentioned that his younger brother had had his high school graduation the night before. At this, we started waxing nostalgic about our own graduation* a few years previous. I don’t know whose idea it was, but someone observed that there was probably a high school graduation going on somewhere in the city, that night. Someone else suggested that we should find one, and crash it.
The idea was absurdly simple; the grad would invariably have lax security, we could breeze in, dance, have bad drinks and take off when we liked. It would basically be a free, fancy party. The idea was bandied around that we should go home and dress up, but it was decided that it would be more fun to try and crash wearing our rat-ass street clothes. As both Ron and myself had recently attended wedding receptions there, the International Inn, out by the airport was suggested. We went out, relatively excited.
We arrived to see a greyhound bus, and scores of well-dressed youngsters, bedecked in corsages. We had found our grad; the trick was then to infiltrate. We were a little surprised to find that adults, teenagers and children were wandering in and out of the banquet hall. Security was not lax; it was nonexistent. So we sat at an empty table, observed the goings-on. While it was kind of a tickle to be crashing, we were crashing a pretty tame family affair. Regardless, we stuck around until around midnight, when suddenly the music stopped, the lights went up and the DJ announced that everyone had to leave the banquet hall.
What the fuck? What kind of grad party ended at midnight? We grabbed some girl and asked her "What the fuck?"
"It’s safe grad," she said.
Huh?
"We all leave the hall, the parents and kids go home, and we have to show our tickets to get back in."
Right. Our tickets.
Sure enough, everyone filed out. The parents and kids left and the graduates all flooded the bathrooms to change from their handsome suits and pretty dresses to skank-ass club gear (I know!). Meanwhile a desk was set up at the entrance to the banquet hall where adult chaperones prepared their materials to presumably check tickets. We were in a jam.
Casually, we sauntered up to the volunteer desk and asked if tickets were really required.
"Yes, or the ticket of the person sponsoring you."
Yes. Our sponsor.
Again, we grabbed some girl (there was a lot of that), and asked if she was sponsoring anyone. No, she wasn’t. Would she… um… sponsor the three of us?
"Sure."
Ha! We were shitting and flying. We passed some time gambling in the hotel’s lounge, and after a suitable while we strolled back to the banquet hall.
It was a madhouse. About two hundred eager graduates were swarmed around a desk with three harried volunteers. This was our chance. We grabbed our "sponsor," and shoved to the front of the throng. Apparently to get into the banquet hall, and be allowed to drink, we would require a wristband and a hand-stamp from the volunteers.
"We need wristbands," we shouted.
"Where are your tickets?"
"Here’s our sponsor."
"You guys aren’t on the list."
"Forget the list, it’s okay."
"Well, you need to be on the list."
"No we don’t, it’s okay."
"How do I know you’re eighteen?""Here, look at our id’s."
"Well… but… you’re not on the list." He was cracking. The crowds were surging all around us. Time was so short!
"It’s okay. Wristbands!"
He snapped under the pressure, slapped plastic on our wrists and stamps on the backs of our hands (except for Ron, for some reason. He didn’t get a hand stamp and thus, couldn’t buy drinks. He was the oldest of the three of us).
So were in. We flashed our wristbands and were welcomed in to the grad party by smiling chaperones. Even now I can say that that was a good feeling. We beat the system.
So we partied. We had bad drinks mixed by chaperones, danced with drunken high school girls; I slaughtered at the fake blackjack table. At one point, I wanted to go and use the bathroom in the hotel lobby, as the bathroom by the banquet hall was packed with pot-smokers. I was stopped by some chaperones and told I had to stay in the banquet area, because of safe grad. Fine.
Fast forward a few hours, around 4 am, I was talking to some boob about something when it hit me like a lightning bolt. Safe grad! They weren’t going to let us leave and drive home whenever we wanted! If our own graduation was any indication, adult volunteers were going to forcibly drive us home, and Ron was parked in the hotel parking lot! Fuck fuck fuck.
I ran out to the dance floor and grabbed Ron. "Ron! This is safe grad! They won’t let us just leave!"
"Fuck!" he said.
We ran over and grabbed Jason. "Jason! Safe grad! Can’t leave!"
"Fuck!" he said.
At this point we noticed that all the exits were covered by two or more chaperones. We were trapped (my suggestion was to rush the doors, which was vetoed. I still think it was the best option). Real casual-like, we went up to one of the volunteers.
"So…um… refresh our memories. What happens at the end of the night?"
"Well, at 7am (!) You get back on the bus that brought you here which takes you back to Oak Park High School, and you go home from there."
Ah. A bit of Winnipeg geography: the neighborhood of Oak Park is a suburb literally at the edge of the city; a long fucking way from where we were, and a longer fucking way from our homes.
We called our friend David, who had a car, and asked him if…um… he wouldn’t mind coming to Oak Park High School at 7 in the morning to pick us up, and drive us back across the city to get Ron’s car. Astonishingly, he agreed, although he needed directions to Oak Park. Uhhhhh. "It’s uhhhh…. Down… Fuck." We asked the chaperone if he could give us directions to the High School, but he couldn’t (despite the fact that his children presumably went to this high school. Apparently the only prerequisite for being a chaperone was being completely useless).
"Could the bus," we asked. "Possibly drop us off somewhere else? Other than Oak Park?"
We would have to ask, he informed us, at the front desk; the nerve center for the chaperone operation.
As casually as possible, we went to the front desk and asked if the bus could drop us off… anywhere other than Oak Park, really.
The head chaperone was stunned by the absurdity of this question. "Of course not," she said. "Once you get back to the school you have to be signed out by your parents."
Ah. Problem. The three of us shared a look, and with our unspoken agreement, Jason tried the direct approach.
"Look," he said. "We don’t go to Oak Park, we don’t have tickets, we don’t have a sponsor, we crashed the party. We want to leave, now."
Her head cocked to one side. "What?"
"We don’t go to Oak Park," he repeated. "We don’t have tickets. We crashed."
"What?"
"Don’t go to Oak Park. No tickets. Crashed."
The chaperone had to sit down. "How did you get in?"
"Doesn’t matter. We bullied past the guy."
"How? It…it can’t be…" The poor dear. We broke her.
More chaperones showed up, and me and Ron told our exciting story a few more times.
"So can we leave?" asked Jason.
"Well, no," said the increasingly hysterical head chaperone. "We’re responsible for you! What if you get in an accident! It would be our fault!"
"That won’t happen, we assure you."
"No! No! You can’t leave! Your parents! Your parents have to sign you out."
This was simply not going to happen. We had reached an age where you could no longer call your parents at 5 in the morning and ask them to bail you out. The possible exception was Ron, whose mother had the kind of lifestyle where she might still be awake at that hour. Ron called her, spoke to her briefly.
"She won’t come," he said.
"Let me talk to her," said one of the chaperones, taking the phone with utmost confidence. "Hello! Yes…I… Uh, yes. No… No, I… uh-huh. Right, yes. Okay. Okay. Yes." He hung up the phone. "She won’t come," he said, defeated. Then he burst into tears (well, maybe not).
At this point we had drawn quite a crowd. We told the story about how we were part-crashers over and over again, such that we got pretty good at it. Ron started telling it in haiku form, while Jason did some exciting things with the chronology of the narrative. The poor head volunteer was curled up in the fetal position on the floor. "No tickets… they don’t have tickets… not on the list." Poor dear. She’s in an institution, now.
Eventually some cops showed up to see what all the commotion was about. Again, we told our story, which, to their credit, they found pretty funny.
"Hey, we’ll sign these guys out and put them in a cab," said one of the cops. Blissfully, this arrangement was agreed to, and we were on our way. The lobby was packed with well-wishing chaperones, who were able, at last, to see the humor of the situation.
The cops put us in a cab and left, hopefully to deal with some actual problem. We argued for a bit over where we should have the cab drop us, when the answer struck us: we had the cab drop us off around the corner. We paid the cabby five bucks, hopped in Ron’s car, and drove home laughing like maniacs. Two days later, I turned twenty years old; this was my send-off to being a teenager.


*Our own graduation was somewhat more banal. Uncharacteristically, even for those days, I didn’t have a drop to drink. Our safe grad involved chaperones driving everyone to their individual houses at 2am. This posed a problem, as everyone then had to find their way to my friend Ron’s party. My parents, also rather uncharacteristically, offered me the use of their car, as long as I didn’t drink. I was true to my word, which was helped by the teachers at my school convincing me that the streets would be swarming with cops on Grad night, who would be searching for drunk teenage drivers. I never saw a single cop car, all night.
In the days leading up to Grad, we figured there would be lots of parties going on, so we decided to just have our own party at Ron’s. As Grad night progressed, we gradually became aware that there were no other parties, and the entire graduating class was coming to Ron’s. We had visions of mayhem, but fortunately everyone was so drained by the long Grad day that it was a very mellow, pleasant party. That was Grad.