“GET OUT OF HERE!”
THE JUDGE SAID

 
I got in some trouble. Didn’t we all? Nothing horrible. Look, I studied hard and turned in my homework on time.

And I wound up in South Euclid court twice. I was riding around on a motorcycle without a helmet. I was on the back of the cycle; a roommate from my A2 dorm had come down to Cleveland and wanted to ride around. Riding without a helmet was against the law. The South Euclid judge knew me; I was a friend of his older son — the valedictorian of my class. The son and I had been in the same JCC boys’ club.

The judge’s son once drove the wrong way on Belvoir Boulevard. He didn’t realize he was driving on the wrong side of the grassy median strip. Nobody died, and nobody was arrested.

The South Euclid judge, by the way, had a quality collection of high-fidelity sound effects LPs, and a good turntable and speakers. I occasionally went over to his house after school and produced audio stories, along with his son, using sound effects.

The judge threw out my case regarding the “no helmet.”

The judge had a younger son, who went to Annapolis, which was a odd for a Jewish boy, but not that odd. That son eventually wound up as the acting chief of the Cleveland FBI and gave me a tour.

Another high school friend, Jerry, joined the Marines, and right before he went in, he had the idea that we sneak into the Mayfield Country Club (strictly off limits for non-members). We jumped into the swimming pool in our underwear and then stole the golf course’s 18^th-hole flag.

The fuzz nailed us on the way out of the club.

We wound up at the South Euclid jail in our underpants. (White.) Again, the judge threw out my case. He said, “I’m not going to see you in here on a regular basis, am I?”

“No, sir, you are not,” I said.

“Get out of here!”

—

(The first half of this story is true; the second half is fiction.)