Story Peeps Change Lives

Bomb Voyage Old Friend

Member: VinceM

This is a story about an incident that happened when I was only twelve years old.

I was a mischievous kid who had no idea of the trouble that I was about to get into. My parents left me home all alone during their trip to New York to attend my cousins wedding. My uncle was supposed to keep an eye on me during their weekend trip and he did this only by phone calls, because I told him that I’ll be fine by myself.

I still remember the night before this all happened. I was home all alone watching some crazy movie about giant rabbits that ate people. To this day I remember that weird and freaky movie, I think it was called “Night of the Lepus”. And I only mention it here, because maybe this weird movie had some strange affect on me; perhaps inspiring me to scare people....hmmm

Sometimes I would build Macgyver like contraptions out of old toys and various things that I found around my house to keep myself busy. As a matter of fact, I was one of those kids that would mix every hazardous chemical that I could find in the house, pour it into a soda bottle, and try to find an ant colony to destroy. I used to be so proud of myself when my concoctions would destroy the ants quickly… Anyways…

The following morning after watching that strange movie, I was inspired to create an ominous looking noise maker that me and my friend Drake could put in the parking lot of his apartment complex or a Caldor’s department store.

I took my old cap gun, a flash from a broken camera, a remote control car motor, and a 9 volt battery. I used wire to connect the motor, camera flash, and the RC motor to the 9 volt. Then I took a black permanent marker and I colored the red cap gun black to make it look more menacing. After all that, I taped everything together along with a little switch that would turn the whole thing on.

This new creation was fantastic I thought. The camera flash would go off making a strange little whining sound between flashes, while the RC motor made the whole device vibrate and buzz on the floor.

Now since I had my creation, I called Drake over to take a look at what I just built.

Drake and I instantly realized that we could definitely cause some major havoc with this innocent but strange looking device. Drake thought we should put it in the elevator in his apartment complex to observe peoples' reaction to it. We simply wanted to laugh our pants off, as people in his apartment complex stared and maybe even ran away from the flashing and buzzing contraption.

We put it in the elevator, but hardly any people came down that day, so we decided to remove it from there. Instead, we placed it underneath the metal astray by the elevator in the lobby. What happened next was an instant success, well sort of…

The RC motor would grind periodically against the metal astray base, and the noise it made was quite strange and loud. Add to that the flashes of light from underneath the ashtray, and soon the people who walked by looked pretty worried and bewildered.

Drake and I were cracking up, until someone pulled the fire alarm. We didn’t think our toy had anything to do with it at first, but Drake decided to walk over to my house and call his mom just in case.

Drake spoke to his mom and she told him that there’s a bomb scare and he should stay away from the apartment building right now. He said his mom sounded scared and the first thing that popped into my mind was "please God let this be something else than my toy that is causing all this ruckus".

Well Drake and I walked over to the apartment complex only to find a ton of fire trucks and police cars all around the building. Plus all 300 people were evacuated and standing outside.

I walked over to a cop and asked him what was going on. The cop mentioned that they found a bomb underneath the astray and the bomb squad is on their way to defuse it.

Oh My GOD!!! I couldn’t believe what this police officer just told me. He might as well said “Kid, you’re in the deepest trouble of your life”, because after he told me that, I knew that I had to confess in-case the story gets on the news and because I didn’t want to cause myself more embarrassment.

I quickly but nervously asked the police officer what the bomb looked like, and I told him that maybe they are mistaking my noisemaking toy for a bomb. I described the noisemaker in detail and they called off the bomb squad.

The police officer had me sit in the front seat of his police crusier, while he spoke to other officers at the scene. Afterwards, he told me that he will have to take me to the police station to file a report.

At the police station, once again I explained that I was pulling this prank all by myself, because I didn’t want to get Drake in trouble. Soon after.  they called my uncle to pick me up at the station.

Man I couldn’t believe this. My parents were coming home and they’re going to learn that I got into very big trouble while they were gone. They’re never going to trust me to be alone again I thought.

I told my uncle what happened on the way home and he couldn’t believe that everyone thought that my little noisemaker was a bomb. I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal either, but it just so happens that this all took place during the Gulf War.

Apparently there were many bomb scares all over the country that year, so the police had to take matters very seriously.

My parents were mad, but they also couldn’t believe what happened and didn’t really yell at me too much because of it.

Weeks after the incident, I had to go to juvenile court and explain what happened to the judge. The judge started laughing as he was reading the case over. I told him what happened and he told me not to worry.

He did however give me 10 hours of community service; which I had to serve at the local Boys Club. The staff at the club had me doing chores for about a week during my summer vacation.

My friend Drake on the other hand was not so lucky. The Landlord found out that it was my toy that caused all the trouble, and since Drake and I got into fights with the landlord faily often, he evicted Drakes parents from the apartment building.

Well that’s how my friendship ended with my friend Drake. His parents were furious with him, because they gave him lots of second chances to clean up his act, and this was the last straw.

I know his parents were pissed at what we did and even more pissed that we got them evicted over it. The truth is we were both trouble makers, but we had no idea that this little prank would be taken so far.

Nowadays, if someone got caught doing what I did when I was a little kid, they would probably look you up for a while. I’m really happy that everything turned out okay, but if I had to go back in time and change this moment, I would have not built that noisemaker to begin with. Heck no!