I had a teacher back in high school, whose kid went to our high school. His name was Mr Strickler, and his stepson Jim Lake was my age, so we were in a lot of the same classes. Mr Strickler was … well, looking back from an adult perspective he wasn't that bad, but he was strict. We'd call him Strict-ler sometimes.
And one weekend, Strict-ler and Dr Lake – that was Jim's mom, Dr Lake. I think she got her MD before she remarried and that's why she didn't change her name. Dr Lake was an ER trauma surgeon, so between her job and her husband's, you'd think they'd've seen every possible stupid thing a teenager could do.
So they really should've known better. But they decided to go out of town for the weekend.
[audience "ooooh"s]
Which you should never do, if you teach high school, or have a kid in high school.
Now, arguably this all could've gone fine. Jim was a pretty responsible kid, and – he wasn't shy exactly, but he was sort of quiet. But Jim's best friend, Tobias Domzalski, was bold. I'm going somewhere with this, by the way; this bit isn't just going to be me describing everyone I knew when I was sixteen.
[audience laughs]
Every few months, Toby would come up with some kind of plan to try and make himself and Jim more popular. So when Mr Strickler and Dr Lake went out of town for the weekend, Toby decided he and Jim should throw a party, at the teacher's house.
[audience makes sounds of amusement and anticipation]
Arcadia Oaks was not a big town. We did have two high schools, but that's because one was a private school. Not the one I went to. But because it was a small town, that meant everyone, from both high schools, heard about this party. And we all got up, individually, and said to ourselves, "Okay. Let's go over there, and destroy the place."
So I go to the party, and I think everyone in town between thirteen and nineteen was there. Surprising amount of snacks – Jim cooked, like, as a hobby, and when things got crowded he'd basically hidden himself in the kitchen to make more food – and not as much beer as I was expecting … but a lot of wine.
Mr Strickler collected wine, apparently, and by the time I got there, somebody had found and broken open the liquor cabinet. So there's a few hundred teenagers crammed into this house, drinking three-hundred-dollar wine out of those cheap red plastic cups – you've seen movies – and munching on gourmet-quality snacks.
Sadly, before the party could get really interesting, someone called the police. I had my back to the door when they showed up, so I just noticed it had suddenly gone very quiet. Then I and a few other kids slo-o-owly turn around, and there's a cop standing in the open front door.
We all just kind of look at him for a few seconds.
And then Eli – this shrimpy nerd of a kid, who you would not think had the arm strength to do this – he grabbed the nearest bottle, smashed it on the ground, and yelled "SCATTER!"
[audience laughs]
Eli grew up to be a diplomat.
[audience laughs louder]
The trouble with scattering was there weren't that many directions to go. There were cops in front of the house and not a lot of side windows. So we all booked it for the back door.
Arcadia has these 'wooded corridors' woven through the city, which meant a lot of yards, once you hopped the fence, backed onto the forest. We actually knocked down part of the fence from too many half-drunk teens trying to climb it at once.
It was kind of a double-bottleneck after that. Everyone going through the back door, spreading out a bit in the yard, and then most of us clustering to go through that one gap in the fence. We broke off in different directions once we hit the woods.
On Monday, I went to school, because that's what we did back then. And who should approach me but Jim Lake. He comes up to me and he goes, "Hey Steve, were you at my party on Saturday?" And I said, "No." You know, like a liar.
[quiet audience laughter]
And Jim says to me, "Things got really out of hand. Someone got into my dad's wine collection; it's basically gone. Somebody broke down part of the fence. But the worst part," he says, "the worst part is somebody stole this old photo album, with antique pictures of my dad's family. My parents are freaking out about it."
He wasn't exaggerating. In History Class, Mr Strickler went off the lesson plan to talk about the importance of personal collections of family history in reconstructing and learning from the past. He offered amnesty to the thief if the album was returned intact. This guy once gave me detention for making a poop joke while we were learning about the Roman sewer system.
No one knew what happened to this album. It was, like, the town mystery for the next week, before most people moved onto other gossip. Then, about a month after the party, I learned the truth.
[audience makes intrigued noises]
I'm over at Eli's house for tutoring and video games. And Eli was a bit of a conspiracy nut, so I don't think it's that weird when he shuts the curtains and goes, "I want to show you something," and pulls out a book from under his bed. I do think it's a bit weird when he opens it and I realize Eli stole our teacher's family album.
So I ask, "Why?", and he goes, "Look," and starts pointing out guys in different pictures. I'm looking and thinking, huh, Mr Strickler's got a strong family resemblance to a lot of his ancestors. Then Eli leans in, real close to me, and he tells me, "Steve … I think Mr Strickler's immortal."
[audience laughs]
At the end of that school year, the Not-So-Eternal Night happened and we found out Mr Strickler was a Changeling, so, he was kind of right.
[laughter and applause]