gum, fruit, and rubbers

Our house was situated at the bottom a hill, a pretty steep hill. I still have a scare on my knee from attempting to ride a skateboard down the hill on my stomach.

My skateboard hit a rock and came to a stop, and due to those nasty laws of physics, I did not.

We rode everything we could think of down those hills. At one point, we were given brand new trash cans, you know the green kind with wheels.....that was INSANE. You could get into those, close the lid and your friend would push you down the hill, and if it did a couple of tumbles....all the better my friend, all the better.

Another favorite past time was walking to the bar to buy candy. The Spanish always had the best candy and gum. For some reason, not known to me, there was a little Spanish owned bar inside the housing complex. A bar that also sold candy to children.

You know until I just wrote that last sentence, I didn't realize just how incredibly creepy the whole thing was.

I remember one day in particular, the reason being, I had just received my very first Walkman for Christmas. I was equipped with a new Walkman and a Madonna "Like a Virgin" cassette.

There I was singing along to the catchy lyrics:
"Like a virgin- yeah....touched for the very first time.....like a vir her her her gin"

"Hey mom, I'm gonna walk to the bar and buy some gum.......touched for the very first time"

"Alright, but remember, don't talk to strangers...........and bring me back a six pack."

When you walked in, it was dark and smoky and there were always a few old Spanish men bellied up the bar. The candy was sold "Little House on the Prairie" style, like you would ask for 50cents worth of coke bottle gum. I don't remember if we paid in dollars or pesetas.

Another, perhaps less tawdry way we acquired our candy was from the "Fruit Man". Everyday after school this Spanish guy would drive around the neighborhoods and sell fruit and candy out of the back of his brown van.........wait..........that doesn't sound quite right either.........

Whether it was on the up and up or not, whatever he was selling, we were buying. The great thing about this guy was, his presentation of the candy. He would make cones out of old magazines and newspaper, and fill the cones with the treats. I loved those cones, I can only imagine now just how disgusting they probably were.

Maybe it was Madonna's influence, perhaps it was due to hanging with old men in bars, or belatedly taking candy from strangers out of the back of their vans, who's to say, but somehow my friends and I got wind of something called a "rubber". We weren't quite sure what this thing was, but we did know it was something naughty, therefore we needed to investigate.

But how.

We couldn't ask someone and risk looking like a child.

We couldn't very well buy any, unless perhaps the Fruit Man was selling?

That left one terrible, terrible option.

We must steal one.

Everything in the base housing served at least a duel purpose. The theater, was also our schools auditorium as well as the church. The convenient store was also our lunchroom. So we were very familiar with the layout.

We thought we knew what the boxes of "rubbers" looked like. So the plan was this....We didn't want the entire box, we just wanted one. So we would get a box and each one of us would walk over to the box and open it a little until it was completely open. Then Gabby would eventually get a hold of one, stick it in her pocket, and we would be out the door before anyone was any wiser.

On a Saturday, we put the plan into place. The boxes were in the back corner of the store. I was first and went back, took a box and moved it to behind all the others and I tore a little corner. Now I was free to run distraction.

I grabbed a coke and a milky way, got my dollar out of the pocket of my Roos and I went to pay. All of the people who worked there were Spanish, this guy had shifty eyes. I was watching him, as he was watching them.

There were four of us, why would four preteen girls walking to the back corner of the store, one at a time look suspicious? I have no idea? But, apparently this guy was no fool, because our fool proof plan- didn't fool him.

I saw the look in his eye the second the light bulb turned on and it was slow motion from there. He walked back to Gabby, grabbed her arm so fast she was unable to drop the "rubber". He pulled her arm free from the shelf and there she was, holding "it". We had done it. We managed to get our hands on one, 1 minute longer and we would have been in the loop.

He yelled something in Spanish and reached back and grabbed the opened box and yelled some more. Gabby was fluent, so she yelled back in Spanish and to this day I don't know what she said, but he set us free. We ran all the way home, laughing harder than we had ever laughed. We still were not 100% sure of our ideas about "rubbers". We had a pretty good idea but still needed absolute proof.

That proof came a few weeks later. There had been an outbreak of "rubbers" being found around the school grounds. All of this detective work could have been alleviated if just one of us would have asked someone, what exactly they were. But the humiliation was too great.

So one Saturday my friends and I were hanging at soccer fields, which were by the school. We were walking and talking and singing about feeling like a virgin, when one of us looked down. There laying on the ground was the answer to all of our prayers....a real live "rubber", set free from the confines of that confusing packaging and everything!

Our suspicions had been right, it was perfectly penis- shaped, rubbery thing. We felt like all of our hard work had finally paid off. We found out without having to to "ask" someone, and it felt really good. But, that feeling didn't last to long before it turned to anger.

"Why didn't someone just tell us what they were?"

"Do you guys think we are the only ones who wonder?"

"I bet we aren't. I bet other kids who act like they know, don't really know"

"Girls, I think it is our responsibility to make sure no one else goes through what we went through!!"

.........................and so we broke into the school and hung the "rubber" from a hook in the hallway......for the good of preteen humanity.