Old School Sundays!!!

So, for those of you who are just now catching on.. Old School Sunday (OSS) is just me wanting to tell everyone something about my life growing up.  Here is this week’s:

At any given moment in my life, you can say, “Travis, I dare you to do this” and my response will 99.9% of the time be “hahaha….ok.”  This was one of those times.  

Jacksonville Beach, Florida.

It was November 3rd, 2005 or in other words 3 days after Halloween.  This meant that every novelty store in the entire country was liquidating costumes for half the price.  I remember walking through a strip mall buying useless items that I pretended I needed for tour when me and the rest of the guys came across a dollar store.  Now before I continue, I need to stress to you the importance of a dollar store while being on tour, it’s seriously everything you need in one store for only a dollar!  With that being said, we continued into the store and saw a bright orange bin that immediately screamed, “each of you need to buy one of me!”  They were costumes, and better than just costumes they were NINJA costumes made for kids age 5 to 9.  We were 17 years old.

Each of us grabbed a ninja costume, mainly to fulfill our fantasy of one day being real life ninjas, and walked to the counter to check out.  The minute we stepped outside, we began changing and throwing on our newly acquired $1 ninja outfits.  Now, reminding you that they were fit for kids age 5-9, you can imagine how tight and odd they looked and also how many holes we ripped in them accidently.  After about 20 minutes of trying to put on the costumes, we were full on ninjas ready for battle!  To give you a visual image.  They were all black, silky type material, they came with a face mask, a shirt, pants, a belt, slippers, and gloves.

Thinking back on it, I don’t remember who came up with the idea, but I can almost assure you that it was probably Danny or Hunter who said, “dude, Travis, I dare you to run into that CVS and yell and scream like a ninja through the aisles and then run back out.”  Like I said before, I was always down for whatever, but since we were all dressed like the Karate Kid I figured why not everyone go in and yell and scream and do cart wheels and run out?  We were all super excited about it, so  he huddled up and each figured out what we were going to do and which way we were going to run. 

At this point, it would’ve been wise for someone to say, “the consequences of our actions for what we are about to do, could be negative.”  But there was no one in our group of friends that had any common sense what-so-ever, so we went forth with our mischievous plan.

We started the escapade by running full speed up to the CVS and stopping because the automatic door was super slow.  After it fully opened we ran in screaming and yelling, doing cart wheels through the aisles and doing ninja kicks in front of the check out line.  Our adventure lasted about 30 seconds, which is a long time if you sit there and count 1….2……3…….4……..5…..etc.  It left everybody with very, VERY confused looks on their faces.  Anyways, as we were exiting the building, we passed a family coming in and start running as fast as we could like ninjas down the street.

Right when we thought we got away with it.  We hear, “HEY!! HEY!!! FREEZE!! ALL OF YOU, FREEZE OR I’LL SHOOT!!!”  We turned around while running and saw a man who looked like the Hulk running full speed at us with a gun pointed in our direction.  We stopped on a dime and threw our hands up thinking that we were going to die!!!  What was laughter turned into straight fear and panic.  Apparently, this man was an undercover police officer who was shopping at CVS with his family (the one we passed as we were running out).  Still with the gun pointed at our heads, he made us all lay on the ground with our arms out until not 1, not 2, not even 3, but 9 cop cars showed up, 1 bomb vehicle, 1 helicopter, and 3 undercover cars.  They blocked off the street and spectators began showing up around the caution tape wanting to know what happened.  

All I remember thinking was that my parents were gonna kill me, like literally if the cop didn’t shoot me, my parents were going to take the cops gun and kill me, so for me it was a lose-lose situation.  We laid on the ground for what seemed like hours until we were handcuffed and placed apart from each other in multiple different cop cars.  They questioned each of us and because we didn’t steal anything or rob anybody, they had trouble finding out what exactly we did.  One thing I didn’t know, was that Danny also bought a Stink Bomb at the dollar store and threw it at the register clerk.  After we ran out of the store, it exploded with a sound like a small bomb.  That’s why the undercover cop initially started chasing us.  Everyone thought that we bombed the CVS and robbed everybody inside….they just couldn’t figure out why we did it while wearing ninja costumes made for toddlers!!  After hundreds of questions, we saw them bring out a large red book and set it on the hood of the cop car.  It had every possible law ever made….ever.  The cops after realizing that all we did was throw a stink bomb and caused some panic, charged us with being above the age of 16 and wearing a mask in a public place.  Now most of you are saying, “I didn’t even know that was a law?”  Well, now you know.  They ended up arresting us and giving us a court date.  

About a month later we arrived back in Jacksonville Beach, Florida to appear at our court date.  The judge picked up our sheet and started laughing.  He looked at us with a smirk and asked us what we did.  We told him, just like I told you and he just kept laughing.  What we didn’t know, was that his daughter was a huge fan of our band.  We were let off with NO penalty or jail time or community service or anything that we thought we would of had to serve.  We got suuuuuper lucky and I’m proud to say that I have a clean record….annnnnnnnd, my parents DIDN’T kill me :)

Daily Advice:  

Do NOT wear ninja costumes fit for toddlers and run around a CVS doing ninja kicks and thinking you are a real life ninja….it WILL end badly.