Far, far in the frost-tipped hills of northern California you'll find my hometown of Weed, CA tucked humbly against the base of the enigmatic Mount Shasta. Yeah my town is named Weed just like what your gma smoked behind the barn with little Suzie Jenkins when her parents would leave to market. In a town of 2700 people the opportunities to have fun and keep yourself entertained are slim-pickens so your options are quickly reduced to novel things like ding dong ditch and other mostly innocent shenanigans like that.
On Halloween 2009, my freshman year of high-school at Weed High School (pictured above), this complete lack of viable entertainment opportunities in a small town is the exact position me and my other 13-15 year old friends were all too familiar with and once again up against. And since we felt too old and dignified to dress up and elicit candy from the townspeople we decided that this year we were gonna have a good old-fashion night of ding dong ditch. We figured the most fitting thing to do was to take advantage of the one night of the year where strangers happily answer their doors and use this once-a-year opportunity to piss off the entire neighborhood like kool kids. I love how the mind works at that age: 8th grade? "Yeah absolutely yes I'm still gonna dress up as a pirate and get snickers." High school? "F*ck no you f*ckin dweeb that's for kids and you're lookin' at a man. And as soon as these testicles descend so too will the jaws of all the women as they peep me bendin' corners in my gmas '96 Buick Skylark."
Now that we had a plan all we had to do was walk to the gas station and get over-sized fountain sodas to fuel us for the debauchery to come. I preferred Mountain Dew Code Red in the biggest available size. Thankfully my angel of a mother(Side note: my mom's birthday is on Halloween so we like to tease her about being the spawn of lucifer.) had given me a couple bucks to support the habit. And unfortunately for the elderly lady who lived in the first house on the way back from the gas station, my group of 8 hooligans decided her house would be a prime first target.
See, the small town lore went that the elderly lady who lived in that house was "crazy" and she never came out so naturally we thought it'd be a fun challenge to see if we could get her to answer the door. Two of my friends rushed to the door and as we all sat across the street with our dumb hearts slamming against our sternums with adrenaline, we finally gave them the signal and they did their part.
"KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK" *everyone sprints away like a pack of gazelles being charged by a gargantuan lion* In every direction we ran: two this way, three others the opposite direction, and a couple of us ran towards a nearby parking lot. As I sprinted with the grace of a thousand swans, by some strange twist of fate my foot failed me and I tripped in the parking lot. Full speed with 30 something ounces of blood red colored soda I start falling. As my friends looked over to see me surely on my way to breaking my stupid face on the pavement and ruining the night, something happened... Something incredible.......... Something spoOoooOky.
I'm not a religious man but what happened next could make a Belieber out of me. Through no conscious control of my own, my brother later tells me that as I was facing my impending doom and falling I somehow launched into and executed a perfect front roll, miraculously avoiding spilling a single drop of my soda, and in one fluid motion transitioned back into a full sprint. Hence the part of the title "The Perfect Front Roll." A story that my friends and I still can't make sense of to this day, I should have a severely disfigured face after that night but fate would have it another way. Next week the story continues with Part 2 of "Halloween, Loose Cannons & the Perfect Front Roll."
