The time is about 10 PM. Quiet suburban neighborhood, most people are relaxing or preparing to sleep. All but a group of my closest friends. We are all around the age of 14. We’re planning our nightly attack on the neighborhood houses. Planning out hiding spots, backup plans, and victims. This was a weekly ritual for us kids, we found much enjoyment out of ding-dong ditching, It may be at the slight expense of others but it’s just harmless fun to us. Most people take it lightheartedly as it should be taken. Others, not so much Perhaps we were looking for someone like the shrewd man that gave us great adventure, panic, and a great story to tell at the lunch table. Nine of us cartwheeling. walking, crutching, along to this seemingly dormant little house. One of us, it’s too dark to tell exactly who, builds up the nerve to run up and ring the doorbell. Everyone else has their hiding spots picked out waiting to dart there as soon as they see the “ringer” turn and dash into the darkness.
The bell is rung, we all scurry to our pre-established hiding spots. While hiding everyone is peeking at the door waiting for someone to come out and laugh at their reaction to the prank, A light turns on in what we assumed was the living room. A man checks his porch, sees no one, and walks the opposite way he came from, and returns to the room he was originally in. We’re all extremely confused and wondering what the man is doing. We assume he’s just realized it was a prank and returned to sleep. What we didn’t know was that the man had actually outsmarted us and was waiting to prank back. After waiting a few minutes in our hiding spots to remain safe we all regrouped around the corner.
We settled on waiting another few minutes and ditchin’ him again. Again we all start to crutch, walk, and crouch, however, we found ourselves near the house’s door. We take about 10 steps on the lawn and the man was watching and waiting for us to make our move towards his house again. As soon as one of us gets within 5 steps of his front door he sets off the panic alarm on his car, We all panic and run down the street as fast as we can. I imagine the guy was sitting in his house watching 9 scared teenagers running for what they thought was their life. Every one of us is running as fast as we can barely breathe but keeping forward trying to get back to the house and hide. As we ran from his yard the man screamed something which some of us didn’t understand but a few did. They recall him screaming “That was your last chance I’m calling the cops“. After hearing this information once regrouped we all hide in the backyard in a gazebo, scared as to whether or not the man was bluffing.
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One extremely paranoid kid downloads a police scanner app on his phone to hear if a report was made. We hear countless police codes unsure as to what they mean until we google each one of them on our phones ”808 on McCarthur Drive” we hear on the scanner. We look at each other nervously as we all know that’s the name of the street we were on. About 10 minutes pass by and we see a cop car with a flashlight looking into yards for suspicious activity. Luckily we all saw the car turn the corner and we all duck our heads so they can‘t see us inside the gazebo. Every one of us scared for our lives and afraid of getting in trouble. When the cops drive away we all sigh in relief and are glad that we didn’t get caught. Although at the time we each had feelings of panic and fear, the experience was one we will all remember and tell stories of for years to come it was agreed upon that that night was one of our favorite and most action-packed night of Ding Dong Ditching.
