Far more than I care to remember...
however...
Back in my days of MASSIVE drugs, I was pretty nocturnal. The nice man that used to deliver a green cheque to my door every two weeks stopped doing so as I refused to go and sit in a room and be taught how to use a pencil (anyone else remember 'restart' interviews?).
The upshot of this was that I needed a job.
I applied for bloody hundreds (well, tens certainly), and to my surprise (this was the late 80's) I was offered two!
One was in a kitchen of a nursing home and the other was a seasonal job behind the bar of a holiday camp. The wage for both was quite frankly a piss take. If I added both together, then by about the second Thursday, I'd have pretty much the same as the figure on the cheque that the nice man used to give me.
Still, I took both, as the bar job started at 8.00.
The Kitchen job started at 7am and finished at 8. This gave me somewhere between none and fuck all minutes to get from the nursing home to the bar.
Somehow, this was never a problem, and I'd get changed in the car on the way. The bar job finished about 30 mins after the bar closed at 1am, so as you can see, there wasn't much time for a social life.
Thankfully, another stoner that I knew lived close by my house and was also nocturnal.
We had an agreement that when I got back from work I'd press the button on the zebra crossing outside his house, he'd hear the beep-beep-beep and come out and we'd go for a spliff somewhere. If I'd knocked on the door or rung his doorbell, it may well have woken his parents. We were considerate stoners, if nothing else.
This worked flawlessly for weeks, until one night, I pressed the button. At that time of the morning in a small village there were no cars passing the detector in the road and so the lights would go red pretty quickly and start making the 'beep-beep-beep' noise.
Only this night, just as the lights turned red Old Bill and his mate came round the corner; saw me and instantly flicked on the flashers.
I ran.
They chased.
I ran through an alley way that lead back to the main road, jumped across the safety gate, and.....landed on the bonnet of another bloody police car.
I rolled, got up, continued running across the car park.
"I know where you live, you plonker!" came a shout from behind.
...and he was bloody right too.
I decided, that rather than wake up my parents, I'd go back.
I went back.
I was trussed up like a turkey and shoved in the back of the car.
"Why were you running?" they asked.
I honestly didn't have an answer, the drugs were gone. I'd dropped the hash in the alley on my way to the second police car's bonnet.
"No reason. I just saw you, and ran"
I told them how I was pressing the button on the crossing as a mate of mine and I used it as a sort of 'doorbell'.
Of course, the pigshit he had for brains couldn't quite comprehend this, and so he knocked on my mates door, duly woke his parents and was informed that their doorbell didn't work.
It didn't matter how many times I told him what I was actually talking about, he simply couldn't get the simple concept into his tiny brain and said,
"Right then. I believe that you've been stealing car stereos...etc...."
So on we went, to every car in every road that was attached to where I was first seen. Every car, he got out, shone a torch in the car, then moved to the next one.
After about an hour he realised that all the car stereos were in fact, in their alloted spot and clearly I hadn't nicked any.
Eventually, after giving me a lecture, he came around, opened the back door, undid the cuffs and let me out.
Defiant, and outraged as only a teenager can be, I said, "Where's my apology?"
"You fucking what?"
"You heard me. Where's my fucking apology?"
The answer to which was to be dragged down the aforementioned alley and thrown up against the wall.
I flinched, hard.
In turn, so did he.
I stood, looked him in the eye and said "Ok. Let's do this."
He walked back to the car and drove off.
Of course, in hindsight, I can actually see why they would think I was up to no good. I can also see that he wasn't walking away from me in fear, but most likely in pity.
Still as thick as pigshit though for not being able to grasp the concept that I might just not want to wake anyone up at that time of night.

Length? Unlike this post, it's tiny.
(dchurch bah, Thu 5 May 2011, 19:22, Reply)