With a little flair for the dramatic, we wore black for the occasion. The five of us were a tad over-the-top, with jackets cut in the Italian fashion, and matching noir everything for the occasion. Looking back, the idea was just teenage amusement, but if we were going to commit a reverse heist, we at least wanted to look the part.
The bitter December night came at a vital period in this dynamic’s development: from this point on, we only became much worse. In fact, only two nights later Colin and I would crash a Christmas party held at one of the casinos, and in our forced dismissal off the premises we stole a five-foot-tall decorative nutcracker and narrowly avoided the charges—that’s where we learned that casinos have a lot of cameras. But take notice how earlier I said “reverse heist,” as this was one of the few occasions the group of us would actually leave something behind.
The idea stemmed from the event itself: a choir concert at the Mohave High School auditorium. Anything involving the infamous “cat-walks” fascinated our delinquent minds. At this point in my life I’m fairly certain that all high schools have the same “someone fell off the rafters during the auditorium’s construction” trope, but we were obsessed with it. After only one previous attempt, Colin had become proficient enough to jump off the railings themselves, situated 40-feet high, and navigate around the outside perimeter of the sound box. By clinging to the lips of the ceiling, falling to the other side of the inaccessible walkways, and opening the operator’s door to the narrow cat-walks, he would allow us to find the roof-access ladder to the top of the highest building around. The insane young man would do this again, in the pitch black, and wearing a suit, all above the hidden crowd about four-stories below.
For many of us on the swim team, at 16 to 18 years-old, we had lived more adventurous lives than most grown adults. We had off-roaded to farther and more obscure desert places in the dead of night than anyone, got lost, ran out of fuel, and called for each other to get equally lost in attempts at bringing more gasoline. On a few occasions we killed our headlights and fled off-road to hide from the police. On another, two of us had totaled our cars in the same night, and Colin and Oggy were forced to walk seven miles through midnight deserts and call an old flame for a desperate ride home. One birthday, Colin even gave me a key to the school’s gate he had picked off a math teacher—so thoughtful of him. The petty-thefts, running, drinking, and otherwise miscellaneous shenanigans led to these late night moments of profound ecstasy. And for the most part, it arguably began with Operation Tree-Bird’s Nest.
Mohave High School was home to the Thunderbirds, or T-Birds for short. And the plan, in protest of the rather short upcoming Christmas break compared to years past, was to place a Christmas tree on the roof of the auditorium. Hence, the title of our little operation: Tree-Bird’s Nest. The start to our open defiance as a friend group was riveting. We had stolen the tires off Max’s car during swim practice before, and taken numerous and increasingly obnoxious things from the school, but we’d never publicly displayed our stupidity for the town before this. Admittingly, the logic behind all this began when we found that the swim team had an abundance of plastic spoons. We hated the harsh, overly cruel, team captains at the time, so we simply began replacing vital items in their bags with the numerous plastic spoons. And once we logged into the admin of the swim team’s Facebook page and private group chat to promptly load pictures of spoons throughout the sites, we appropriately became the “Spoon Captains.”
The idea was complicated, but put linearly, it could make perfect sense. Dawning our noir attire, Colin and I would sneak past the sweaty sound box operator during the concert, and he would do his 40-foot stunt. Once he opened the locked access to the cat-walks from the other side, I stuffed the door with tape, in hopes that the adhesive would prevent the deadbolt from locking into its fixed position. We would then do the same for the sound box stair access, and eventually the heavy outside doors to the auditorium itself. Naturally, this had to occur during the actual concert so no one would be lurking or walking around the open halls. Two more, Max and Dylan, would get the faux Christmas tree, brick weights, and ornaments made from the disposable plastic spoons from the cars and hide it behind the auditorium for easy retrieval. The final two, Connor (my little brother) and Jacob would pace the concert and ensure no one would wander into our paths during the sabotage. Unintentionally Connor and Jacob were mistaken upon several occasions as ushers, which worked largely to our advantage.
This scheme, in all honesty, was flawless. Colin and I successfully packed the operator’s door, sound box door, and large auditorium doors with enough tape they would only appear locked. Max and Dylan stowed the tree, spoon decorations, and brick weights for the base behind the auditorium and well out of sight. And Connor and Jacob ensured no one saw any of this actually go down.
The six of us managed to actually enjoy the rest of the concert as well—Mohave had a notoriously talented choir department, something I’m not actually sure it still boasts today. Then again, memories like these are always idealized. We thanked and congratulated the choir on another one of their outstanding performances, ensured no one looked at the sabotaged bolts within the doors, and lingered as the last of the tired staff complimented us on our over-the-top attire. We only bailed when we began to assess risk versus suspicion. We couldn’t stick around too late, and have the few wandering crew members assume we were going to fuck with something . . . the group of us already developed a mild reputation as Spoon Captains—Colin especially.
We moved our cars across the street to one of those very stereotypical, dilapidated, and beige strip malls that only Arizona manages to keep alive. You know the ones, in its small pre-interstate-40 but somehow nouveau-route-66 towns. And we sat in wait in the inconspicuous parking lot until the last dying tail lights of various employees filter out of the Thunderbird driveway. Now, it was time.
We crept Max’s gold Toyota Corolla through the only intersection and killed the lights as soon as we reached the lot, slowly moving to one of the most obscure and far away spots for us to park. For the first time, but not the last, I used my birthday key to let us walk through the back gate to the auditorium undetected. And Max and Dylan meticulously and quietly led us through the brush to discover our instruments of stupidity. Dawning now slightly soiled black suits and Christmas spoon decorations, we moved along the complicated and shadowed route from the inside, rather than the exposed side, of the school to the front door. Now, it was my turn to lead. So I squatted along the exposed front entrance to the packed door, and yanked the metal enclosure. Thud. Locked. And inaccessible.
The heavy and oppressing lock of the main entrance had compacted the ball of adhesive tape in the hour or so since the sabotage. All I could do was look back at the crew, and know I was the key component that prevented the greatest prank we could have pulled off to date.
“Guys . . . the tape didn’t hold.”
“What do you mean?”
“The door was too heavy, the deadbolt is locked . . .”
At the news, Colin dropped his end of the tree, took my gate key, and ran towards the hot orange halogen lights of the front entrance. He yanked in the same desperate technique I did, and forced the wrong key into different positions in an attempt at turning the 45-year-old doors. He came back just as defeated as I was.
The realization that the crawling, climbing, and dressing up had equated to a fairly fun night anyway, perhaps, prevented them from strangling me in the midnight shadows of the empty school. Compared to sneaking back the way we came, we simply stepped off onto the sidewalk and began to walk down the main walkway of the school—the same walkway we had triumphantly marched out of earlier that night. And then, the entire view of the school’s sidewalk essentially funneled our view to the main academic building: T-Wing.
We didn’t actually talk, just looked at our dusty shoes and kept our heads down toward the direction of the car, carrying our tree, bricks, and duffel of our handmade spoon decorations. And that is when, I think it was Colin, of course, took an optimistic view of the low hanging, but omnisciently present, T-Wing.
The new plan was made on the spot. Max, the biggest of the boys, would reluctantly serve as some kind of base. And me, the tallest of the boys, would get on his shoulders to make up the height. And Connor and Jacob would boost Colin, who was simply the boldest of us, up the makeshift ladder Max and I would serve as to propel him up the roof. Once done, all the rest of us had to do was throw the materials up there, including the bricks, so Colin could get started on the Tree’s construction and decoration.
With about 10 minutes of time passing, we didn’t see Colin’s head, or the tree, pop up from the roof. But all the while, we could hear some sort of action happening. We called to him a few times to make sure he hadn’t actually fallen through the roof somehow, and feeling somewhat helpless, we simply kept eyes on the parking lot, ensuring no one from the highway saw him on the low roof of the school.
Colin eventually emerged, jumped down without our help, and stool among us outside T-Wing.
“Uh, where’s the tree?”
“Oh it’s up there.”
“Well we can’t see it, dipshit.”
“Don’t worry about it. You’ll see it tomorrow.”
And just like that, it was the end of discussion. “Don’t worry about it” always, without fail, ended a conversation within the group. We ruined our first attempt at Operation Tree-Bird’s Nest, arguably found an even funnier and more pronounced spot, and now we didn’t even really know what Colin had done with our tree, other than leave it up there and on its side.
“Chris, can I have a ride to school tomorrow, and early?”
“Sure buddy.”
And we simply walked out the front gate, easy and without worry, like we had done only an hour and a half earlier from a nice night of listening to the concert.
Early the next morning, in an even greater act of heroism, Colin sneaked into the doors of T-Wing, long before first period would start, and opened various janitor’s closets until he found what he was looking for. He locked the door from the inside, climbed up the roof access ladder, flipped the fully assembled and beautifully decorated Christmas spoon tree upright, bent back down, and crawled off the roof while people were only just beginning to filter in.
On the last Thursday before winter break, our Christmas tree, decorated with spoons, stood throughout the day and bid every student good luck on finals.
A year later, we had calmed down exponentially. College approaching, a few drug and alcohol charges, variously wrecked cars, and newly gifted student council elections had tamed us to a pretty manageable level. And school administration kept a close eye on Colin from then on. But surprisingly no one, ever, questioned who put up the tree. That is until, just before graduation, Anna, a helplessly innocent freshman in student council, asked me a question.
“Chris?” Anna said in a loud whisper.
“Yes?”
“Do you know who the Spoon Captains were?”
“I’m sorry?”
“The Spoon Captains! Aren’t they the ones who used to steal stuff, and put the tree up on the roof a year ago with a bunch of spoons on it?”
I looked around the busy classroom as students made posters, raised their voices in attempts at establishing order, and people stood in a gaggle waiting to ask the advisor to sign unimportant papers. I made some brief eye contact with Dylan and Colin, and smiled.
“Yeah, I knew them. Don’t worry about it, Anna.”
Chris is an English major with a certificate in literature and a minor in French at the Honors College of Northern Arizona University. He is the president of Le Cercle Français and plans to teach English abroad in France in this upcoming year.
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