Imagine a
scene: Two young teenage boys walk into an outhouse at the ferry terminal.
Shortly after, there’s a boom and some smoke. What do you think could possibly
have happened?
Yes, this
really occurred on the island, where kids have to take the ferry to school every
morning and then wait with all the other kids on that same ferry in the
afternoon to go home. It can be a tedious, boring ride, so crowded that no one
can social distance, and then there are all the adults sitting in their cars,
parked in line, also waiting to get on. One ferry worker is standing there, and
his only job is to direct traffic onto the ferry when it’s ready to load and
make sure no one cuts into the line. (That has happened, and I wrote about it
in another post.)
But as far as bathrooms
at the dock on the island, you’re looking at one of those portable outhouses—not
exactly the kind of bathroom anyone is lining up to use. In fact, it’s a last
resort. The daily commuters comprise the twenty to thirty kids dropped off by
the school bus, a few teachers, and the minimum-wage frontline workers who
commute because the island no longer has affordable housing. Among this bunch
are two teenage boys who walk past the line of cars to the outhouse. At this
point, you may be wondering what they’re doing, but instead everyone waiting to
walk onto the ferry or sitting parked in their cars carries on with their own
business, looking at their phones, playing games, or staring off into space.
Then something
catches your eye. You’re not sure—a waft of smoke? This is followed by a loud
boom. Now everyone is looking, staring in horror, watching as smoke wafts up
from the outhouse. Yet the two teenage boys aren’t running; they’re casually
walking back down to the ferry dock as if nothing is wrong. Would you expect
anyone to do something, say something, call someone? There’s no fire, only
smoke, and the nuisance bomb that was set off has likely only created the kind
of mess no one wants to clean up. Now the ferry is docking, and no one wants
any disruption in getting on and back home or wherever they’re going.
When I heard this
had happened, hearing a blow by blow of the shenanigans of those two teenage
boys, I had a good chuckle. “Hey, guess what? Two boys blew up the outhouse at
the ferry today,” I was told. Of course, I thought, You mean the disgusting,
dirty one no one wants to use? I could really imagine two teenage boys
walking to the outhouse together and then walking away five minutes later as it
blew up.
Now, if any of
you have read The O’Connells, you’ll know that sort of prank is something
Marcus O’Connell would have been all over during his teenage bad-boy years. In
fact, his name would have been graffitied near the incident, marking him as the
mastermind behind it. And he wouldn’t have done it alone, instead roping his
brother Ryan in as his sidekick and partner in crime. Where the two of them
were concerned, trouble was something to get neck deep in. Though Marcus never
got caught, Ryan was a different story. Marcus was wily, smart, and as he says,
that’s likely why he’s such a good cop today. When you understand that kind of
trouble, having gotten up to it yourself, you have a pretty good idea of who
might be behind it when a similar incident occurs.
But back to
those boys and the outhouse on the island. There were adults in their cars,
even a few teachers, and island workers waiting with the crowds to board the
ferry to go home, yet no one said anything. My response was, “You mean no one
called the police, the fire department? No ferry worker walked over to see what
had happened? No one got out of their car?” Apparently, no one did. There were just
a few headshakes and a few looks at the boys. As the ferry docked and unloaded,
the boys made their way into the crowd of walk-ons, and the cars boarded, and
the only thing that happened to that outhouse was that a worker taped it off. No
one said anything, no one did anything, and no one seemed to care.
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