Value Free

That old house on 11th where my friends and I lived in the confused past had a few names. The two that stand out to me were “The Boy Scout House” and “Bedlam.” “Bedlam” was the name that stuck. H-ward painted it backwards right below the address numbers on the front porch of the off-white barn. At times, up to seven of us lived in the maze of inexpertly remodeled rooms thrown up inside its early 19th century frame. To the outsider, it truly was a bunch of boy scouts living in bedlam. To the insider it truly was a bunch of bad scouts living in bedlam. Something was always going on. There always is when you have that many people trying to exist in the same space. Unfortunately, the elephant’s share of what happened there rarely involved cleaning or general upkeep. At that age, nobody can be concerned with picking up after themselves let alone preserving the roof over their heads. Bedlam even had its own boat! That’s right, the Bedlam Intruder. I was house sitting for my parents one summer when the UPS man mistakenly dropped off a large bulky package on their doorstep. The address on the package had an SE when my ‘rents resided on an SW. Being a little more “value-free” and “rational choice” driven back then, I loaded the box into Truck Truck #1 and drove it back into the city. Once at Bedlam, we opened the package and discovered a three person, inflatable raft. The Bedlam Intruder was christened, inflated, filled with beer and taken ten blocks north to Greenlake where we embarked on our maiden voyage. The only wrinkle in our plan of the day was that there were five of us and the raft could only hold three. It was a hot summer day so we took turns splashing around outside the raft in the water. Everybody took turns in the drink except for G-flipps. He kept delaying until he was practically shoved in. As he went over the edge into the lake, he stuttered something about not being a strong swimmer. He went in right over the top of me as I tread water next to the raft. Subsequently, I went under the green, soupy waves like a plastic bobber struck by an angry lake trout as G-flipps death clutched my feet and legs. It was like he was trying to use me as some kind of ladder so he could hurtle himself out of the lake and into the sky like a human Polaris missile. My roommates always seemed to put themselves into harm's way at Greenlake. Peat-Rich nearly severed his toe trying to jump off a dock one moonlit summer night. I think that was the same night Johnno and I were walking home cutting through some condos and I fed a lawn sprinkler through an open window by an attached garden hose. Sure enough, the light came on about four or five seconds after I turned on the water. Bulls-eye, we hit the master bedroom. Like I said, things were a little more “value-free” in my late teens.