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Stealing Street Signs
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I was 13 or so and I remember J showed me a street sign in his room. I
think it was a yellow pedestrian crossing sign. J was a year older than
me and lived a block away. I spent as much time as possible at his
house. Everybody here knows why. In retrospect, they were just as poor
as we were, but their house always felt nice to me.

Another night, three of us snuck out. J, some other kid that I can't
remember, and me. I can narrow down the other kid to maybe three or four
different possible suspects, but it really doesn't matter.

That night, we stayed up late watching trash TV, likely awful 1980s
action movies. And then after about midnight, we snuck out of his house,
maybe through his back window, armed with wrenches and other tools, and
we took down a few street signs and smuggled them back home and hid them
behind J's garage.

Honestly, it was one of the most exciting nights of my life. It became a
thing we did a lot. Sneak out and steal street signs.

I remember years later somebody talking about how dangerous it was to
steal stop signs. Accidents might occur. We never thought about it then.
We were stealing these because we were just trying to prove something
about ourselves to each other.

We weren't out to cause harm. Our neighborhood was a slum already. Every
block had two or three boarded-up houses, we saw drunks passed out in
the park any time of day.

It was not the kind of neighborhood where anybody would notice a ONE WAY
sign going missing.

A year or so later, I got jumped and this time I got pretty hurt. Two
boys rode by me on a motorcycle and one hit me with a brick.

Now, looking back, I see those boys a little differently.

They were doing the same thing we were doing by stealing street signs.
They didn't think it through. They were acting tough.

It was scary as hell when it happened, but it was over. They hit me out
of the blue, I fell down, dazed, and I saw them speeding away. I was
physically hurt pretty bad, but honestly, it didn't haunt me like other
shit has. It was too quick. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong
time. They could have killed me, sure. I was hurt pretty bad. But
honestly, I don't hate them like I hate some of the other sadists I've
run into.

The cops told my parents that this was going to keep happening. After
that, my mom was a mess. We moved way the hell out of the city to a
small town. My dad would drive an hour each way to work.

Irony: small towns have just as many bored violent boys. I hid stuff
after this from my mother because I realized she would likely never let
me out of the house if she knew.

J and I are still in touch. The neighborhood is still a slum. His
parents now live in an apartment and he and his three children live in
his old house. And as far as I know, the stolen street signs are still
behind his garage.