Maybe you can’t go back

The names of this story have been changed to protect the innocent.

This evening I was out at my friend’s house kind of late. Let us pretend it was about 2am when I left. On my way home I traveled by another friend’s home and as I passed I thought to myself what fun it would be to throw rocks at their window and wake them up. This will be just like when I was in high school. (Yes, I did this a lot to my friends.) So suddenly I am an 18 year old giggling and thinking what a great idea. Unfortunately I am also more or less a grown person and this voice interjects saying it is 2am and my friend will not be happy being woken up. So of course I do the adult thing. I pull over and flip a coin. Heads the rocks fly, tails it is home to bed. Up goes the coin and heads it is. So I backtrack a bit and pull in front of the house. Departing my car I reach down to the ground and grab a few pebbles. Rocks are nowhere to be found which is probably a good thing. As I am striding to the house I realize a minor flaw in my plan. In high school the major fun of this whole exercise is to wake up the friend without waking up the parents. In this case there is no one else to wake up. So immediately a large part of the fun is taken out of it. But I don't let something trivial like that stand in my way. One pebble, two pebbles, three pebbles, a light comes on, four pebbles, etc… Then another thought occurs to me. In the old days I would expect my friend to open their window and start a hushed conversation with me. After all we don’t want to wake the parents. In this case they might as well walk to the front door, open it and walk on out. I could have just rung the doorbell. Where is the fun in that? I am momentarily stunned not knowing if I should continue throwing pebbles at the bedroom window, start tossing them at the front door or simply run. I am out of pebbles. Back to the road. Now armed with more pebbles but still not sure where to deploy them I stride to the house. So far the only light is coming from the bedroom so more pebbles are tossed there. At last, movement in the curtains. A cat jumps up on the ledge. Hmmmmmm...... maybe I should just go home. A couple more pebbles and still no sign of my friend but the cat is definitely interested. Looking around I see no sign of the flashing blue lights and think maybe I am lucky. At this point I am suddenly tired and decide the whole idea was really stupid. So I leave wondering if we can ever go back to our youth. My friend will read this and suddenly understand why they were woken up in the middle of the night. They’ll probably be a little annoyed with me for waking them up, but it was worth it. (I am sorry for waking you up but I had a really good laugh at myself. Next time I promise to stick around and say hi.) I have decided that I definitely need to do more things like this. When I come your way please don’t call the cops on me. :)

PS. Ok so there were no names, and who is really innocent anyway?