Surfing around reading other blogs, I stopped at a guy’s page who wrote a great movie review 25 years too late, About Writing .  He finally got around to viewing one of the best all time movies, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  Now this movie is one of my all time favorites.  As I said on this guy’s blog, I spent my high school life trying to be Ferris Bueller mixed with Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties.

After I skimmed through this blog post, I began to think back about all the bad (Ferris) things I did in high school to try and emulate this fictional character. 

One field trip in particular, we had a 2 day trip with a group called National Closeup .  Our field trip was supposed to consist of taking the school bus down to the center of downtown Houston.  The first day was a tour of the jails, police stations, etc… The second day was for the courts. 

Trying to live like Ferris, I quickly realized that there was very little adult supervision so after the first stop a small group of us took a wrong turn and started touring the city alone and away from the teachers (without them knowing of course).  We shopped, ran around in the underground tunnel system that connects all buildings of downtown Houston.  I remember even getting a haircut at an underground barber shop.  I probably flirted with the girls that ran away with us.  You get the picture… We had a great day of clowning around.  We snuck back into the group towards the end of the day and the teachers never knew we were gone.

The other kids found out what we did and there were phone calls all night from friend to friend, group to group on how they were going to skip out on the 2nd day and do what we did.

I am not one to ever be “out-done” or “out classed”…  I had to plan an ever more crazy stunt.  Day 2 arrived and we took the bus downtown.  I immediately took off with my best friend and 2 cute girls.  We hailed a taxicab and had it take us 20 minutes away to the Galleria area of Houston.  If you are familiar with Houston you know that its a huge mall.  We shopped, ate lunch and flirted with the cute girls. Caught a cab and rode back without the teachers ever knowing.

I was such a fool. 

I wonder what would happen today, 2011, if we were caught?  Compare that to 1987 getting caught. 

Times change, kids are still fools, and the punishments are worse.

Tags: alex p. keaton, crazy stunts, family ties, ferris, ferris bueller's day off, fieldtrips, high school, michael j. fox, national closeup, skipping