June 14, 1980 The next day

Today's mom and dad's anniversary. I got up late. I worked today- 12:30-11:00
I talked to Doreen about Boston the whole time. She's cool. After work I went to B's for a BJ. We had an excellent time. Today was just like any other Saturday. H.S. being over hasn't set in yet- Oh well- gotta go to bed. Goodnight.

mom
+
dad

22 years.


I worked at a 7-11 for a couple of months in Hillsdale, NJ until I was fired because I couldn't cover my shift on a Saturday night and I just went to the James Taylor Concert in Tarrytown, anyway. Doreen was a year older than me and was going to B.U. and I was about to head off to Tufts, so she filled me in on Boston. She was a huge stoner and we used to get really high working the 8PM to 4AM shift which we were happy to switch to because we could get really fucked up and steal. We ripped the place off like there was no tomorrow. All you have to do to rip off a 7-11 is not ring things up...just leave the cash register door open, but lean against it so noone knows what you're doing. Someone comes up with milk and eggs...you know it's $5.07, so you punch in 5.07 so it shows on the screen...you ask for the 5.07, they give it to you, and you put the 5.07 all the way over to the left-in the section for the fifty dollar bills, of which you have none. This spot becomes your special section. If you have to make change with the customer, no problem. Just put the unrung 5.07 in your special section after they leave. Once they leave, press clear. Nothing was rung up and you now have $5.07. Do this for a while, always making sure you put the money you make in the special section...when no customers are in the store, you count what you have in your special section...every time you get up to twenty bucks, you put the loose mess of bills and change from the special section back into the main part of the register and pocket a twenty dollar bill. Total theft. Continue the procedure all night (or until the owner's wife comes in the next morning), and with any luck, you can pull in about $140 in 1980 money.

I eventually visited Doreen (and it turns out, her name was actually Dorian) at B.U. one night Freshman year at Tufts. My new friend and dorm mate and fellow engineering major from Ohio, John Rosa, came with me and we used his sister's car and we got all messy on weed and on the way out of Boston, John made a lefthand turn into the trolley tracks that ran in the middle of the street. For some reason, there were no rails in the cement pad, only slots where rails once sat. The four wheels of the car landed in the slots and the chassis of the car landed on the cement slab. We had to call his sister to get us a tow truck. I remember we didn't have a quarter, it was 3AM and we had to get one from a stranger so we could use the payphone. It was winter and we were really cold.

But back to June 14...


Apparently, that night, I went to B's for a BJ. B is Barbara, my long suffering girlfriend of the era. Poor thing. As you can tell by what I wrote, I most likely did nothing but get a beej that night. Sad tales of a seventeen year old guy who was not so into girls. Poor B.

My parents had their 22nd wedding anniversary this day, Flag Day. I imagine we sat around at dinner and listened to the tales of 1950's Yonkers and how poor my parents were and how they got married and they were just kids and how my father ended up with pneumonia because he worked so hard and how my mother went to Kansas to live with an aunt for a year in high school because her mother and father were fighting all the time and when she lived there, she went out with all these other guys because she was something exotic outta Yonkers but she only did it to make my father jealous because she heard that he was dating that tramp so-and-so (another Italian tomato) and she'd show him. They were engaged not long after her return from Kansas.

"I Learned the Truth at Seventeen."