The LBC

Before Dawson had a creek and Ryan moved to the OC there was . . . LBC.

LBC, also known as Little Beaver Creek, was the road I lived on in high school. And unlike the Creek and the OC, it definitely did not warrant a television show. At the time, it was 90% dirt road that made about a five mile loop off of the highway. The nice thing about living out on the LBC was there were a bunch of other kids out there. It was almost as good as living in town, except instead of living blocks apart in town; you lived either 20’s (as in acres) or miles apart.

This past weekend I was up visiting my brother and we were reminiscing about high school. After comparing the number of times we lettered (I was the clear winner), how we extricated ourselves from having to practice with the band but still played at away games and our half-assed attempts at competing in the Science Olympiad, our talk moved on to life on the LBC.

One of the things I’m most remembered for amongst my friends is doing something stupid while driving. Living in a small town, three people had called my parents before I even made it into the parking lot at school. Thus, my punishment was my car being taken away for a couple of weeks. So I did what any smart ass teenager would do in that circumstance. Knowing that my parents fully expected that this meant I would have to suffer the teenage embarrassment of riding the bus to school, I called my friend Seth who lived just down the road and asked if he could give a ride to school for the next couple weeks. Since he was likely to run into the same problem eventually, he readily agreed. The parents were not pleased with this turn of events, but knowing they hadn’t been specific and I had outmaneuvered them, opted to leave it alone. They’d probably be even less pleased if they knew I had a bet going with my friends as to when they’d get tired of picking me up and driving me around and give me my car back.

I know I wasn’t the first kid, or the last, to get their car taken away for being a dumb teenager. In fact, I’m pretty sure it happened to every kid on LBC at some point. And we all offered each other rides when someone lost their car for a period of time. Unfortunately, not only did we all live up the same road, a whole lot of our parents worked together and all of them knew each other (small town thing again). Once the story of how I outsmarted my parental units got out, any time a kid lost their car, an additional punishment was clearly stated, “And you will ride the bus. Riding to school with someone else is not an option.”

So while we never had an opportunity to bond together while standing outside a school board meeting shouting “Donna Martin graduates,” the kids of LBC were there for each other when it mattered. Which was usually when one of us was carless for being an idiot.