Ponyboy

When I stepped out, into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman, and a ride home.

-Ponyboy, The Outsiders

The last thing I remember before falling asleep, was the ugly girl sidling up beside me in her own sleeping bag. Matt Dillon was saying something on the big TV, but I wasn't really paying attention.

I was 13, and primarily concerned about moving my sleeping bag away from the troll without looking overly insensitive, yet motivated by my mortal fear of being discovered by anyone the next morning in anything like close proximity to her.

Surprisingly, I was at church, on the floor of the large utility room usually used by the college kids. It was an ill-conceived co-ed sleepover; well chaperoned, but amateurishly organized. Mobs of pre-teens, who lacked my insomniac fortitude, had already sacked out in the high school hall on the other side of the wall. The night owls remained in the college hall, and were watching the Outsiders on VHS.

I didn't get it. Boys with dirty hair and no apparent parental influence were run-amok. I lost interest and slowly succumbed to the siren call of sleep.

The next morning, I smelled bad, as 13 year old boys often do. I reconnect with my pals, who had been separated through the poorly-executed nocturnal sorting system.

They looked like shit.

I did too. Hair ahoo. Clothing, grease stained and rumpled.

And this is where the addle-brained adult scheme broke down. See, there was a purpose, a method to this madness. The plan was, having fed us junk food and entertained us with Jesus-approved family fair, depriving us of sleep and comfort for 14 hours, they were to load us on buses, not unlike cattle, and drive us out to the newly developed burbs in the city of Chino.

Now, for those of you who did not grow up in or near eastern LA County, Chino is the place where cow shit goes to die. It is rich farm land in the middle of a megalopolis. The dairies are vast, prolific and subsidized by the government. The billions of manure-producing cows are outnumbered only by the billions of Mexican farm hands hired to handle them.

And in the middle of this stinking fly-infested shit stew, someone decided to built massive tracts of upper-end suburban subdivisions.

Suburban subdivisions, of course, mean potential tithing worshipers, so we were bussed in to hand out Baptist-related promotional paraphernalia to the new neighbors.

This plan, of course, was problematic.

The day was hot, and the bus had no air conditioning. The permeating odor of cow-ass was only overcome by the collective stank of a thousand unwashed 6th graders. Said 6th graders, having been subjected to the previously-noted overnight activities and denied any form of civilized bathing facilities, looked for all purpossd like the last rag-tag refugees from some medieval children's crusade.

This, combined with the fact that 60% of the development had not yet been inhabited, led to a colossal let down, and a fair degree of collective complaining.

As for me, when I stepped out, into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the church bus, I had only two things on my mind: I had to pee, and I wanted a ride home.