Las Vegas Part Two

Now that I’ve been thinking about Vegas again it brings back memories that I’ve almost forgotten about.

I was just talking to my mom about how ‘comfortable’ we had gotten with our privacy being invaded all the time.

Our house was broken into about 5 or 6 times and we were always home at the time, sleeping.

The last time we were stolen from was when we bought a new stereo system for the family room. We bought all the gear including these really cool huge speakers. I wish I could tell you what kind they were but I was a female teenager so I didn’t care. We paid for them in advance and then got permission to pick them up after the store closed and it was dark out. We pulled into the car pad with the truck bed facing the house and hoped that no one saw us carry all the gear down the side of the house and in through the back door. Call us paranoid but after you’ve been burglarized that much you don’t want to take chances with thousands of dollars of stereo stuff.

I remember having a big movie night with my girlfriends that weekend which I’m glad I did because everything got stolen a couple days later.

My two sisters shared a room so when Amber woke up and was too afraid to go to the bathroom she naturally woke April up to go with her. While they were in the bathroom they heard people in the backyard and they could see them trying to get in the house. They ran back into their bed and stayed there all night listening to the guys walk around the house picking and choosing what they wanted to take. Get this, these guys went into the house packed up all our gear into our own truck and then drove off with our stereo equipment. My parents woke up when they heard the truck start up and drive off so my Dad grabbed his gun and pointed it at them but it was too late. The police found the truck a couple days later just off the freeway in some desert still together.

Another time my mom was in her room sleeping. Now in her room the window was just above her bed and since it was so hot out the window was open while she caught some Z’s.

She had a terrible nightmare that she was covered in ants especially on her face and she started thrashing around and swatting at her face until she slapped herself and woke up. There was a small tree branch on the pillow next to her and she heard a couple people running and laughing. They had been using the stick to tickle her face while she slept! We never did find out who it was but I’m sure it was funny to watch my mom thrash around in bed screaming about ants while slapping herself.

Some mornings, usually in the Summer we would wake up and hear this loud whooshing sound. We’d go outside and see a ton of hot air balloons all over and a lot of times they were low enough to the ground that we would talk the people inside. Then we’d go over to the school field where these hot air balloons were lifting off. It was awesome to watch them laying out the big colorful balloons and then filling it up with those huge blow torches that blew hot air into them. To a kid it was like Christmas in the Summer.

We never had to worry about being robbed when we moved to Bellingham Washington but I had a really hard time adjusting. In fact it hasn’t been until after I moved away and got married that I can sometimes call Bellingham home. I couldn’t get over the facade that everyone put up.

There were even some kids that liked to dress up like gangsters. Yeah, whatever. I had seen gangsters jump a kid, almost kill him and then pick him up and carry him off like he was a hero because he survived, barely. I’d seen gangsters carrying all sorts of weapons my entire childhood and it was normal. I’d had friends who had been horribly abused by some gangster boyfriend because he wanted to ‘share’ her.

If you decide one day that you’re going to wear thick eyeliner and call yourself a gangster, don’t expect me to not laugh at you. Oh, and if you are an A cup one day and a C cup the next don’t expect me to believe you either. (Sorry, that’s another story.)

Bellingham is where a bunch of rich dudes went to retire and brought their spoiled kids with them. I don’t know why it was so different for me but I had been around kids that drove really nice hot (stolen) cars but when I saw all these rich kids driving Daddy’s Mercedes, I hated that.

It was also the first time that I realized that there were parts of the world without ethnic diversity and real prejudice all in one city. That was bizarre for me to grasp. If you don’t even know anyone that’s not white, how can you hate them? In Bellingham you were cool if your family had money. You could be ugly and stupid but if you had money you were cool. In Vegas you just had to be able to talk and hold your head high. Don’t ever flinch.

That’s it.

It was on you to make yourself cool, not your Dad. No one cared about your Daddy in Vegas unless he was the neighborhood drug dealer in which case you were really popular.