#1 Neighborhood Zero

I grew up in a great neighborhood.  We knew everyone in the neighborhood.  We knew where the adults worked, what grade all of the kids were in, which school they attended, what cars they drove.  We actually "knew" these folks.  There were yards we were allowed to play in and others we could not.  We were allowed to pick pomegranates from some yards and go swimming at others.  Really, it was a great neighborhood to grow up in.

We were conveniently located about 4 blocks from the Charleston Plaza Mall.  The beauty about this place was, there was a killer pizza joint, the Fox Theater, a karate dojo and a library branch, not to mention 2 or 3 furniture stores, an antique store, drug store, grocery store and a Woolco! 
 


On Friday and Saturday nights, the mall was our haunt!  We'd sneak out bikes and skate boards in the mall and ride down the big hill inside.  The object behind that was to get chased out of the mall, so in all fairness we were not being "little angels". 

So we were at the mall one night and there was nothing happening.  The group of us were all afoot and we couldn't develop an alternative plan for fun, so we decided to disband and head home for the night.  Keep in mind, this is well before curfew.  As I rounded the corner to my house, I noticed a cop car in the driveway so I sprinted to the house.  I blow the front door open and there is a cop lecturing my mother about her kid "stealing a car tire".  He turned his lecture towards me and began questioning me as to where I had been and with whom I had been hanging out with.  He then told me that I had been I.D'ed as a kid who was carrying a tire across the mall parking lot towards in the direction of my house.

The cop (who lived around the corner from us, and used to be a real cool guy with the coolest truck in the neighborhood) tells me to "produce the tire or be prepared to go to juvenile hall".  My mom said, "he and all of his friends are 13 years old... they don't know other kids who have cars... this is bullshit, so arrest him or get out of my house!"  The cop left but kept telling us that "he'd be watching all of us kids."

We didn't steal anything... this guy was out of his mind!  He went from potential hero to eternal zero in a minute.  He did manage to keep tabs on us.  We used to play football in the street at night and he'd drive by and tell us that we needed to be in by 10 on the weekends, even though curfew was 12.  What a dick this dude was....  Total 0!!!!