“How Did I Not End Up As An After School Special?”
Jan 06, 2025
The following is a tale that I have listed under TFTDS, but it is less about dad and more about how I really should have ended up on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries at least once in my lifetime. The true main character of this story is the scallycap my dad gave to me.
If you are like me, and you’re not a hat connoisseur then you might have called this hat a “snap-brim hat”, but thanks to Google and my obsession with being correct, I have found out that the below pictured hat is actually called a scally cap. Or a flat cap. An ivy cap, newsboy cap, cabbie cap, golf…anyway. (For years, my dad would tell my mom all about this hat he had when he was younger. It was the most stylish hat, it “looked sharp.” Many of you don’t know that there is a significant age gap between my parents, which most often resulted in my mom finding my dad’s taste to be…for lack of a better term, and to be kind…” outdated.”
She thought it made him look old.
Years go by of this man recounting his glory days, until mom finally gives in and surprises him one year with the cap in question—the scally. He wore it once, but I don’t think he even wore it outside of the house. It was one of those times when he got what he wanted, but immediately understood why no one wanted him to have it. His head was made for snapbacks only.
This is where I come in, along with the story. The entire reason you are here reading what I typed.
The setting: a small town in northeastern Ohio in 1995. My parents and I had just moved from the even smaller town that I had lived in for the previous 16 years, and I was struggling to make new friends. I had never changed schools before, and I was always struggling in new situations. The school we had moved to was far different to the one I’d left behind, but I had managed to make a few friends with other students who were also new.
This story involves one such newbie that we will call Christy—because that’s her name. I do not know where she is now, but I hope she’s doing well.
At the end of my first week at the new school, Christy invited me to come and hang out at her house and spend the night. I think my parents were a combination of exhausted from the move, and eager to get their sulking teenager out of the house, so they took Christy’s word for it when she said everything was on the up-and-up, and so did I.
It is after school on a Friday, and the hip thing to do in a small town in those days was to hang out in the nearest fast food restaurant parking lot. My dad gave me his scally cap, and I am proudly wearing that sumbitch backwards like I am Slater from the movie “Dazed and Confused.”
While hanging out with no car and no money, and really no plans, Christy is talking to these guys in a car, and they invite us to a party.
What follows is…well…let us just say, you will not believe the turns it takes.
Since she had moved her months before I did, and she seemed really cool, I trusted her friends as much as I trusted her. We climb over trash into the back of the car occupied by older teenaged boys that we will call Dude and Bro, and head out to a party in the next town over. Oddly enough, the party was at the apartment of a guy that is known not just to my family, but also the cops in the town that I moved from—immediately my thoughts are “If I survive this night, my parents are gonna KILL me…”
DISCLAIMER: No one, especially not me, was in any way harmed in this story. At all. Not even a little. So, please, continue with reckless abandon.
I have an Aunt Lolly who has a nephew named Anthony who was nothing but trouble. But bill-paying adult Anthony was not at all the violent monster I had heard he could be. Even though there were about twenty people crammed into his studio apartment, and despite the lines of coke he was doing, Anthony was pretty hospitable.
While we were there, the party of four became a party of five when Dude and Bro were asked by their much older friend Creep if they could give him a ride to the bar. Since I have always been taught to “You leave with who you came with”, Christy and I bid adieu to the small-time coke dealer and joined our new band of merry men on to the bars. Did I mention I was sixteen?
I pride myself on my imagination and quick-thinking, and it was these skills that aided my journey on this night. However, if anyone had paid attention to the bullshit coming out of my mouth, they would have called the cops.
As soon as we are in the car, Creep starts talking to me and asks my name. This is a full-grown man, I believe he was in his thirties, but all I remember is thinking he looked like the dirty version of William Katt.
Creep asked my name, and of course I responded with…
“Penelope. But you can call me Penny…”
I do not remember if Christy had a code name, but I somehow remembered to give that name to the bouncers in this backwoods bar we stopped at. When they asked my age, I said something ridiculous like twenty-six, and the bouncer told me I looked no more than fifteen.
“What? Hah, you’re so kind…” I did not get into the bar, but no cops were called either.
Sometime during this excursion, Christy had talked me out of my scally cap and was wearing it herself. I envied her long blonde curls, so I had no issues letting her wear it since I felt like a thumb with stringy red hair. She looked sophisticated and cool at the same time. Like an accessible prep, or a friendly poodle. Friendly, but not as smart as you would like a poodle to be.
Which is why I could not understand why Creep kept trying to talk to me. At one point, I reminded him that I was sixteen, and of COURSE he said: “You seem so mature. I’m willing to wait.”
Even though my hackles were raising little by little all evening, I still did not consider telling Christy to have Dude and Bro take us home. Nor did I consider calling my parents for a ride—I had NO idea where we were, and I have a particularly good habit of not telling my parents about the fuckshit I’m doing while I am doing it. That is a fast track, my friend, and we do not fast track the discipline in the Baldwin household. We fuck around and find out.
Because I did not listen to my inner voice, Creep invited Christy and I to come back and sleep at his house. I am beginning to panic, and Christy said “Oh, cool, Penny and I can share your bed?” to which he agrees and says he’ll be sleeping on the couch. Phew!
This is when it gets less terrifying and funnier, also—fuckery.
So, we end up at Creep’s house just before dawn, and his SISTER is home. Yes, the grown man lives with his sister, and she is TIRED of his shit. She is not asking questions, but she does direct Christy and I to go sleep in her bed, and she will take us home when she returns from wherever it is she’s going.
Christy falls asleep, I cannot. I have never slept well while away from home, but this is high alert. The I’m-Gonna-Be-In-So-Much-Trouble alarms are at Defcon Boarding School level. I am trying to figure out if I can walk back to town, or if there was anyone—anyone—I could trust to come and pick me up, when I hear it…
“pfffffffweeeeeeeeewwwwtttt”
That man farted so long and so loud that I thought he was about to start flying around the room. I LOST it. The exhaustion, the drugs, the alcohol, and the stress all took their collective toll on my teenaged brain, and I started laughing hysterically. I laughed so much that Christy woke up, and I continued laughing. She joined in, but I had laughed for so long and so hard that I began to sob. Have you ever laughed like that? It is awful.
All I could think was that I am going to be trapped in this dark and tiny house with this weird curly haired man who farts so much he may as well have shit himself, and I can never go home and tell my parents! Once again, Christy had an idea. We will call our friend Jack, who is the one who introduced us. He had tried to date both of us at various times, and if you had ever met Jack—well, he’s a nice boy…
Jack agreed to pick us up, and within an hour we were finally leaving that gaseous hell. But now I have a new problem—what do I say if/when my parents see me dropped off? I am not allowed to ride with boys! I am not even allowed to ride with my sister, but that’s for different reasons. Jack pulls in the driveway; I hop out of the car with my bag and walk into the house like this is all normal.
Mom and dad are sitting in the living room, having coffee. Mom says “hi”, and I immediately say “CHRISTY’S BROTHER JUST DROPPED ME OFF BECAUSE OTHERWISE THERE WOULDN’T BE A WAY FOR ME TO GET HOME AND ANYWAY, I’M SO TIRED BE CAUSE WE STAYED UP ALL NIGHT WATCHING MOVIES AND I’M JUST GONNA GO LAY DOWN NOW BYE”
Now, I cannot speak for my parents, but they know I am a terrible liar. But they also operated under the “she’s alive and untraumatized, I’m not picking this one” rule of thumb.
Later that week, I ran into Christy at school and asked her if she had my hat.
Christy: “I think I left it in the back of Dude’s car.”
Me: “Oh no! That’s my favorite hat! Can you call Dude and get it back?”
Christy: “Call Dude? I don’t have his number…”
Me: “What do you mean you don’t have his number, he’s your friend.”
Christy: “Huh? I thought he was your friend; I don’t know him!”
Y’ALL
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