"Why is it called Stalag Luft III? Is that Navajo or something?"
So you can imagine my surprise when at 4 a.m. that very next morning, two ex-Army-looking guys burst into my room, grabbed me, and shoved me into a car like a CIA abduction of a Taliban lieutenant. They told me that my parents had signed their rights away as my guardians and had given these two A-Team rejects complete authority to get me to Idaho with extreme prejudice. In this case, "extreme prejudice" just meant driving me to Idaho in a van, or maybe flying me there if I didn't put up a fight.
I agreed to cooperate peaceably enough to take a plane and save them a bunch of time, provided they let me make a phone call once we got to Idaho. My kidnappers agreed, and once we landed I borrowed one of their cellphones and called a friend of mine back home to tell him to find my pot stash and get it the hell out of my house before my parents discovered it. Considering I made this call in the middle of the abduction my parents had arranged to cure me of my delinquent behavior, I'm not sure how much more trouble I could've got in if they had found it, but better safe than sorry.
"Bring him home so I can send him back there a second time!"
To be fair, my kidnapping story went about as well as it could possibly go. The guys who do that sort of thing are called "escorts", and their behavior can range from perfectly civil (like the guys who got me) to "dragging you through the airport like you're on your way to a Corleone family indictment." None of this comes cheap, either: My parents dropped somewhere around $5,000 to have me stolen away in the night like a pair of goblin shoes.
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