Mark Dice - 11 Oct

Causing Trouble
2012 by Mark Dice and The Resistance
All Rights Reserved
Published by The Resistance
San Diego, CA

No part of the text within this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form and by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher and the author.

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ISBN: 09673466-9-X

eBook ISBN: 978-1-62346-360-1

Table of Contents

Kids always cause trouble when theyre growing up, especially boys, but not like my friends and I. We didnt steal cars, commit armed robberies, or burn down someones house. Our trouble was different. It was more creative. It was more fun. It still landed us in handcuffs, in the newspapers, and for me, ultimately getting kicked out of high school and featured on the evening news. But there was a style to our trouble. It was often misguided creative energy that we didnt know how to handle in our youth, and would manifest itself in our outrageous schemes, our over-the-top pranks, and a life that was more exciting than something out of a movie.

Years later, whenever discussing high school pranks or stupid things people did growing up, I always had the best stories. Always. And not just one epic story that became legendary at the school for years afterward. I had story after story of the craziness. My stories were so entertaining to those listening that occasionally people said I should write a book about them, so I did.

Ill tell you about every detail: Painting obscenities consisting of 30-foot-tall letters in the snow on the football field using food coloring mixed with water in a giant weed sprayer; sending hundreds of magazine subscriptions to a teacher and checking the bill me later box; replacing the magazines in the school library with old pornos from the 1970s that a friend of mine found in her dads basement; sending a fake college rejection letter to a former friend informing him that the school had changed its mind about enrolling him; and thats just the beginning.

Two years after getting thrown out of high school for a prank I orchestrated that got out of hand, I moved to California with one of my best friends and the craziness continued for about a year before I really started to grow up and channel my energy into more positive things. You could say that immediately after moving to California was the lowest point in my life as you will discover in this book. Within two weeks I found myself in jail for a DUI and later helped turn my roommates closet into a marijuana growing operation hoping we wouldnt have to spend money on pot anymore since we smoked it every day. Instead of getting jobs, we started selling fake IDs to people at my college in order to make money because we didnt want to work since we came to California to become successful and live the dream. We were headed on a crash course with complete disaster.

I dont know what it was that caused all of this craziness to manifest itself in my brain and in my life. Maybe it was because I never had cable TV growing up, so instead of mindlessly sitting in front of the television for hours on end, I had to come up with things to do to entertain myself. In the 1990s there was no high-speed Internet yet, there were only dial-up modems that took hours to download even small files. Maybe it was because I lived in Wisconsin, and for six months out of the year the weather was too bad to go outside and I was stuck indoors for months on end, so we had to do something for fun. Maybe its genetic, because from what I understand one of my grandfathers was a trouble maker when he was young. Or maybe its because my mom wouldnt let me take karate class. Im not really sure.

My trouble making crew mainly consisted of Fred, Diego, Ken, Rick, as well as Marty and Brent. Fred and Diego are my two best friends and we have all known each other since the first grade and lived on the same block growing up. Ken and I became good friends in the fifth grade after he moved to the area with his mom and brother, and I met Rick, Marty, and Brent freshman year of high school.

This book is 100% true. Everything that is written about here in this book happened just the way it is described and nothing is exaggerated or fabricated. Everyone who knows me and grew up with me is familiar with a lot of these stories since they witnessed them first hand. The names of some of the people involved have been changed to maintain their privacy, since youll find a lot of craziness occurred that Im sure they dont want to be connected to, even though the statute of limitations is probably passed and nobody can be prosecuted. If anyone has the same name that is used in this book, it is merely a coincidence, and is in no way referring to them.

And keeping in line with the typical clich to avoid any legal problems (both for myself and for you) from people attempting to copy anything that my friends and I did, I insist that you please do not try any of this stuff at homeor anywhereever. Youll have enough fun living vicariously through me just from reading about what we did, so theres no need for you or your friends to do it too. And before you get all judgmental and think that Im a completely terrible human being for some of things Ive done, please read through the entire book before coming to judgment, and remember that its tough being a kid.

High
School

Fake Pregnancy Test Results

Rumors started going around that two particular teachers at our school were having an affair. Mr. Bell and Mrs. Hartnett. One of them was divorced, but the other one we thought was apparently still married (as far as we knew). They also somehow convinced the school board to let them team teach a course combining art class and geography in what they called global studies. It was the dumbest class ever, and we didnt really learn anything and pretty much just drew a bunch of pictures and did childish arts and crafts. I hated Mr. Bell and his dumb class that was probably just an excuse for him to spend more time with Mrs. Hartnett. He was an obese man with a fairly normal looking upper body, and then around his stomach and waist, his body just inflated into a massive blob, making him look like an oversized bowling pin or pear.

Anyway, a lot of us students believed that they were having an affair, so I sent an envelope to the school addressed to Mrs. Hartnett with large letters printed on the outside that read, PREGNANCY TEST RESULTS ENCLOSED. PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL. As you may know, most teachers have their own little mail slots in the school office and whoever receives the mail has to go through it all and put it in the appropriate slot. The words PREGNANCY TEST RESULTS ENCLOSED were so large and noticeable that whoever was separating the mail in the office couldnt miss it, and Im sure they couldnt help but gossip about this strange piece of mail that came in addressed to Mrs. Hartnett, and that was exactly what I wanted. Inside the envelope I put a piece of paper that said Fuck You written across it. Not as creative as the outside of the envelope, but hey. Of course, neither she nor Mr. Bell ever mentioned anything about this envelope after she had received it, but it wasnt the last I would hear about it.

Probably six months later, maybe even a year later, my momwho usually never approved of my anticscame home from grocery shopping one afternoon and told me that she bumped into Mrs. So & So, who worked in the office at the high school, and my mom started smiling excitedly like she had heard some incredibly funny news and went on to tell me that this woman told her about the pregnancy test results letter that Mrs. Hartnett had received and figured it was my doing. She also told my mom that she thought it was hilarious. My mom and I started laughing, and she went on to say that the office lady had figured that it was my handiwork (and she was right).