Day 5..........and still there is more!

I may have been a criminal accomplice, once.

     When I was in high school, records were popular.  For those under 45, those are vinyl disks that contained music.  You played them on a record player.  If you were really talented, you could put the hole on a pencil point and spin it rapidly with one hand and then put a sharp needle on the groove and hear music.  Well, not really.  But it took me several records to learn that.
    We would go to music stores to buy records.  This was pre Walmart times, and there were actual stores that sold items like records, or books, or clothes.   I know, it was a strange and subversive world.
     Larry T was a guy from the neighborhood.  He was a natural athlete, an outgoing kid, everyone liked him and he liked everyone.  OK, downside, he may have been the first of my "posse" to actually smoke a cigarette, and for sure he was the only one to mainline heroin, but he was a nice guy.
     Actually the heroin thing was a learning experience.  I was riding around with Billy G., another good guy from the neighborhood, when we saw Larry standing on a corner by a park.  We stopped and offered him a ride.
    When he got in the back seat he sort of mumbled and looked spaced out.  Plus he kept flexing his arm and mumbling.  Did I mention he was mumbling?  Well, he was.  He also did not recognize Billy or me, and Billy was his best friend.
     "He's shooting up!"  Billy said.  "We've got to get rid of him."
     We did something I am not proud of.  We drove Larry to his house, let him out, and went on our way.  We should have told someone...his parents, a school counselor, a family member, his priest.  But we didn't.  We also went out of our way to avoid  him, even to the point of leaving a bowling alley, or restaurant when he came in.  I didn't want to be guilty by association....again.
    Before Larry T got into drugs, we hung around a lot.  One day I said I wanted to buy an album, so we went to the record store.  We were flipping through the records when Larry said, "Go ask the guy about a record over in the back."
      So I did.  The clerk showed me something, I nodded, and noticed Larry had skedaddled pretty quickly.  I found the record I wanted, paid for it and left.
       I caught up with Larry about two blocks later and he showed me the reason he left.  He put a 78 album under his coat and walked out with it.
     He used me as a decoy, a stooge, a set up guy so he could steal the record.
    I was probably 15 and it was a shock to think someone I trusted used me.  I was always a little careful with that friendship from that point on, but we still were buddies two years later, when I helped take him home from that park.
     That was the last time I saw him.....stumbling toward his house, mumbling and flexing his arm.