Learning to be cool !!

.Cool: 1. moderately cold; lacking warmth, 2. producing a feeling of coolness, 3. calm in action or thought; composed. I really wish I would have been smart enough way back then to check the dictionary's definition of cool. Here is how my new friends defined, cool.
Lung cancer, pot head, falling down drunk and lets try to kill some people while were at it. It’s amazing because just a few short months prior to us making our move to a "better school district" I was scared to death just to come home a few minutes late or literally to do anything against my dad's word. I was afraid to get beat or maybe he'd just put a gun to my head again like he did one night when I was 11 and he was mad at my mom. In just a few short months of smoking pot I really didn't care what my dad thought at all and I began breaking all the rules...
At first I broke down and tried the cigarettes, it probably took me 4 or 5 weeks just to get over the coughing and learn how to inhale properly. After all I needed to perfect that to take full advantage of the pot that I had begun to smoke with my new cool friends. I already told you about my first full blown booze experience, my new friends really liked me because I had a steady supply of that. At first it was the whiskey but you could only water down the bottles so much before dad restocked. I had considered stealing some from my parents work but I wasn't quite that brave - yet. I had quit hanging out there through the week because I was now old enough to stay home and take care of myself. I did however take a job there working on the weekends so I could buy my own pot and keep gas in my dirt bike.
It's a shame too, because my dirt bike had suddenly become my means of transportation to get to our party spots and make cigarette runs to the local convenience store. It was quickly fading from my list of fun things to do. At that point I started to steal my dad's beer because there was always plenty around and it was hard for him to keep track of it.
So we had made are move and my life as I once new it was over. There was no more waiting around the bars for my dad to get done drinking. I was now sitting around with my own friends doing my own drinking. Through the week mom would be at work and dad still had his normal routine so many nights we could catch a buzz after school and be in bed by the time he got home. On the weekends I would get off work around 9:00 so now dad had an even better reason to stay at the bar till then. He was waiting for me to get off work to take me home. After work I was on the move because many weekend nights me and my buddy's would "sleep out" so we could party all night long. It was perfect, I could get wasted and my parents wouldn't even know it.
And that's when the real trouble began; staying out all night lead to bigger buzzes and bigger parties. I was meeting cooler friends and doing even dumber things. I was a 13 year old juvenile delinquent. Stealing things, destroying peoples property just for fun, breaking into churches and homes, blowing things up (yeah Larry was into building bombs). We would set things in the middle of the road just over a knoll late at night just to watch people crash their cars into the corn fields. Do you know how cool it was to sit 4 or 5 trash cans on the road where people would be traveling 45 to 50 mph and watch them loose control of their car in a panic.Yeah, real cool - we were lucky nobody died.
It sure didn' t fit definition # 3 above - composed. No we were far from that. It would be the beginning of a long ride through hell with Satan by my side. It was just beginning and I had no idea where it was headed next. The worse part of it all was that I thought I was the coolest kid around.