Driftwood

This is bad. I've nearly killed someone. In fact, potentially several people. If you were standing on eighth avenue in midtown Manhattan that day and looked up, you would have run for cover, as meaty chunks of raw lumber rained down with menace through the city air. Heaved from an office building window eight stories up.

The sender was I.

On Saturdays, I used to ride with my stepfather Jerry to his office in midtown Manhattan, where he would catch up on loose threads from the week. We’d drive from North Jersey via the turnpike and invariably my stomach would begin to churn as we breached the Lincoln Tunnel, knowing that I would soon be tasked with meaningless office duties like document filing, stocking shelves; the kind of things that induced soul crushing boredom for a thirteen year old kid. That was just fine with Jerry, who seemed to gain a perverse satisfaction from my suffering. And though he welcomed any complaining as a catalyst to deploy his wrath, I knew better.

After a few hours of work and a much needed break, I wandered through the eighth floor halls to kill some time. Passing an open door, I peered inside to discover an entire office space under construction. The skeletal appearance of this expansive space in flux gave me a strange sense of adventure. Then something caught my eye. A pile of lumber scraps on the floor, near a large open window. Suddenly I had a thought, “It would be interesting to throw those out of that window.”

I inched toward the window sill, then carefully leaned out over the dizzying scene from eight stories high. As I gazed down onto the usual Manhattan street bustle, I noticed the building across the street and followed it with my eyes upward, noticing that its roof was just below the height of my window. “I'll whip these two by fours out of this window and see if I can land them on that roof,” I thought. At that point my ideas were becoming worthy of the Nobel prize.

I picked up one of the two by fours, took a few steps back to set my momentum. Then with the ruthless fervor of Genghis Khan, began to hurl large chunks of wood into the New York city sky. Some of them made it across to the other building’s roof.

Some of them.

By sheer luck, no one was killed. I did, however, explode the windshield of a parked van, which sent the adrenaline shot I was looking for straight into my veins, but swiftly gave way to a sense of dread.

I hightailed it back to Jerry’s office and continued on with my tasks as if everything was normal.

But then... a knock at the door.
The cops.
“We've got a report of large debris being thrown from a window on this floor. Know anything about it?” said the uniformed policeman.
The voice in my head piped up again... “Lie.”
No way in hell I was going truth on this one. A confession was precisely equal to suicide. And lie I did. But Jerry only needed a quick glance into my eyes. Who else could it have been?

The police jotted their notes, wrapped the inquiry and headed for the elevator. Jerry closed the office door and began to gather his things. It was clear this Saturday trip was over. In the time in took us to lock up the office and ride the elevator down to the parking garage, I received not a word or a glance.

The car ride home to New Jersey that late afternoon would’ve stiffened the spine of even a cold blooded killer. I was a captive being led to the torture chamber. For the grim, hour long highway trip home, a verbal refrain echoed from the driver's seat. “You're fucking dead.”