Down the road I had to pull over the Buick to exit and hold my aching sides. Mooners staggered out of the trunk, chinos still at knees, yet none could talk 'cause we were paralyzed with a rare laughter that should be bottled as elixir. The kind that leaves one hurting, crying and laughing at once as victim pleads with himself between gasps: "Stop. . .please!" Nothing compares.

Twenty minutes later we circled back to Mac's. Half the crowd had gone but the remainder hosannahed us like Jesus entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday — astride an ass.

Our zeal ended the next day when one of the trunk-mooners and I were jailed. It seems the fire chief's daughter was driving that party-bound car we'd mooned. She told Dad, he told the cops, whose staff artist sketched the Buick's driver based on her description. I was caught bare-assed as she'd seen only my mug among a carload of buttheads. The cops didn't have far to look because their Pennsauken (NJ) headquarters were located 30 yards from the funeral-home parking lot where my pals and I played basketball.

All 17 years flashed before me as I sat behind bars, unsure which of the Ten Commandments I'd violated. Yet the cops hadn't booked us, hadn't taken our fingerprints or mug shots, hadn't called our parents, and our cell seemed more like a drunk tank. Then I heard the heretofore gruff cops in another room laughing their ass off, and realized they were using nun tactics to scare us. They set us free in 30 minutes.

My luck held as Mom and sisters didn't learn of my lunacy. If they had, no sweat 'cause I had a scapegoat in mind.

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