During my sixth grade year, my best friend Jesus and I met two people who would later become two of our closest friend. Their names are Cesar and David. Two years after we met Cesar moved away and would visit whenever he could. Every time Cesar would visit Jesus, David and I would go to the movies to hang out. Jesus and David were always the more active and spontaneous ones in the group while I was more calm and thought out than them. Cesar was somewhere in the middle, being calm yet very active when he wanted to be.
The movie we watched was never really important or memorable, the theatre was a location where we could go for a few hours and hang out without parents over our shoulders. I don’t really remember most of the movies we went to watch, but I remember what we did around the time of the movie. Often, our favorite memories of us hanging out at the movies something went wrong. I would often guess that something will go wrong and try to warn my friends, but they usually ignored my warnings, and I was usually right. One of the most memorable instances of this happening was the “fire hydrant shenanigans”.
One weekend during our ninth grade year, Cesar told Jesus, David, and me that he was going to come visit. Due to the fact we hadn’t seen him for a while, we were excited that he was coming over. The 3 of us had already made plans to hang out that weekend so we all already had our parent’s permission and were able to hang out. We continued with our original plan of meeting up at my house while we waited for Cesar to arrive. When we saw that his mom had arrived, we all hopped in the car to get dropped off at the movie theater. Much like every time we go to the movies, we argued on which movie we should watch.
After arguing for ten minutes, we had finally decided on the movie Chronicle and went to buy the tickets. When we bought the tickets, we saw that we still had around forty minutes to wait before the movie started. 4 young teenagers with forty minutes to kill and no parents around don’t come up with the best ideas to kill time. We couldn’t agree on what to do so we started wandering around the parking trying to come up with something to do. I was still looking around when I had heard Cesar say “hey, let’s jump over those fire hydrants”.
I replied with “that doesn’t sound like a good idea”. Cesar told then told me “when was the last time you were right about something being a bad idea? ” Before I had thought of an answer I heard Jesus excitedly say “let’s start jumping over these fire hydrants! ” As my friends started jumping over the fire hydrants, I sat down waiting for something to inevitably go wrong. About thirty seconds into their game of leap frog with the fire hydrants, Jesus had appeared to have a rough landing.
Right after his landing I had heard David yell out “oh my gosh what happened to your pants? Immediately after David had said that, Cesar and I looked to see that he had torn his pants from the top of the thigh to the ankle. At first there was a brief moment of silence as we were trying to figure out if this was all part of our imagination or if this was actually happening. After about a thirty second silence, we figured out that this wasn’t part of our imagination. As you can imagine we all started laughing hysterically. Jesus stood there looking, and most likely feeling, embarrassed, the rest of us started discussing what we should do with his ripped pants leg.
Of course this was after we had laughed hysterically and made fun of him for a little while. “We should go to Walmart and buy some tape to try and put his pants back together” Cesar had suggested. I replied with “that would be a good idea, but we don’t have enough time to walk to Walmart and back before the movie starts. David then asked “well, what if we went to Food 4 Less and try to find something to fix his pants with? I think they have tape there. ” Since we were unable to think of something better to do, we had decided that the plan David came up with was the best one we could think of.
We left Jesus near the movie theater to go to Food 4 Less in order to try and find something to get his pant leg closed enough to walk in to the theater without making a scene. While we were there, we looked through every isle searching for something, anything. The first thing we could find were band aids. I had jokingly suggested that we should buy some and use them to fix Jesus’ pants. They gave me a serious look that I knew meant now is not the time for joking and continued looking around. After we went through every isle, unable to find the tape, we accepted defeat and walked back to where we left Jesus waiting.
When we got there, we found Jesus with his sweater wrapped around his waist, hiding the giant tear in his pants. We told him about how we had tried finding some tape but we couldn’t. I had told him that I joked with the rest of them about buying the band aids, he didn’t find it funny. With our movie starting soon, we decided it would be best if Jesus had watched the movie like that. During the movie, we kept cracking jokes about how he didn’t listen to the warnings and ripped his pants. He just ignored our jokes and continued watching the movie.
After the movie, he had asked his mother if he could sleep over at the house Cesar was staying at without telling her about his ripped pants. She had said that he couldn’t and had to go home. Looking back on this memory while writing the essay, I asked Jesus “Hey, what had happened to that pair of pants? ” He thought about it and simply replied “oh those things? I walked into the house and my mom asked if I was going to sleep over with a pair of ripped pants, and I told her that I was going to come back home change then go. I also asked what he had done while he was waiting for the rest of us to get back.
He had said “I was waiting for you guys when my crush walked up to me and asked why was I waiting there. The only thing I was able to think of was ‘I got shot’. She then left and we never talked about it again. ” Many years after this, Jesus and I still hang out. Much like in the story, Cesar still comes over once every blue moon. David, however, went to the military, so we couldn’t keep in touch as he had no phone.
