I don't remember making a conscious decision that I was going to start wreaking havoc, it just sort of happened. Marc and I had been skating in Twin and so naturally we kept doing it when we moved to Wendell. We use to go down to the elementary school and skate around the sidewalks and try new tricks. One day we ran into a kid doing the same thing who lived right across the street, his name was Donny. Donny isn't like any kid you know, he was different and we use to have a blast with him.

Donny use to mow this guys yard and we would go over and wait for him to finish so we could go skate. One afternoon I had pulled up in my Datsun pickup and honked the horn. Donny came busting tail from around the side of the house and was close lined by a tree branch. He did a full back flip and landed on his stomach and he just got up laughing. Another time we stole a parking block from a doctors office in town. We were carrying it over to the middle school so we could rail slide it off the stairs. Well Donny was getting tired and he dropped it right on his foot. I thought that it wasn't a big deal but then blood started coming out of his shoe. Donny said that it was nothing and that he was going to skate that rail since he had put so much work into stealing it. He made a couple of passes and then said that he had to go home. Donny didn't skate for 6 weeks after that since he had busted up his foot pretty bad.

Marc, Donny and I use to skate all over town and would frequently get stopped by the cops for trespassing and being out after curfew. We never went without a fight and that is where we started getting into trouble. One day we were skating at the elementary school and a cop stopped by and told us to get out of there. We walked over to Donny's house and hung out until the cop left and then we went right back. The three of us skated over there for awhile and we started to get thirsty so we tried a couple of the doors to the school and found that there was one door that was unlocked. We went in and got a drink and used the facilities and then went back out to skate. Not long after that the same cop came back and saw that we were out there skating again and he pulled his car right onto the grass and came out yelling at us to come over there. We scattered, running in all directions around the school. At one point Marc and Donny decided to hide in the school and made it back to that door, I was not so lucky. I ended up giving all of my information to the cop while Marc and Donny watched from inside the school.

One night we were skating at the bank and a cop came by and told us to leave so we booked it down to the other bank in town to skate down there. We had been there for about an hour when some drunk from Stockman's Bar came down and told us that he could skate. He was dressed in cowboy boots, wranglers, and a tank top. One of us let him use our board thinking that this guy was going to eat it since he was so drunk. To our amazement he got up on the board and skated down the sidewalk and back. When he came back he did a handstand on the board and road for just a minute before he ate it head first into the pavement. We all got a good laugh and the guy stumbled up the road out of sight.

Moving to Wendell.

Moving was a pretty big deal to me at 15. I didn't want to leave Twin and what I had going there. I really didn't have a choice though. My grandfather had died that summer and my parents were moving 20 miles away to the town that they had been raised in. I had spent a lot of time in Wendell growing up since I had lived there when I was younger and both my grandparents lived there. It wasn't like this was a foreign place to me but it was quite a bit smaller then what I had been use to. Even though Twin is still a small town I considered myself to be a city kid. I hadn't ridden a horse or raised livestock and I had no desire to do so. I wanted to move to California and I was pretty sure that I would fit in there. I knew for a fact that moving to this small town was a step in the wrong direction.

Marc and I started by driving to two a day football practices in Wendell from Twin every morning and night. We didn't mind it since we were able to take my dads Honda Del Sol. The Honda Del Sol was my dads mid-life crisis. It was a little two seater convertible, white with black interior. He would loan it out to kids to take their dates to prom. I use to love this car and had he not wrecked it I am sure that I would have. I borrowed it one night to go to a party and when I pulled up a bunch of girls asked if they could have a ride. I said sure and before I knew it I had 12 girls packed in that car, some in the trunk, one on my lap and a bunch packed into the other seat and area behind the two seats. It was crazy and I had a blast.

Well one morning after football practice Marc and I got on the freeway to head back to Twin to continue packing and a little 280-Z from Colorado passed us doing 100 mph. I told Marc that we were going to follow him and we headed right behind him. By the time we hit Jerome we were doing 110 mph and just flying home. We made it home in 10 minutes that day and never did see a cop.

Marc and I loved football practice because the coaches always pitted us against each other. This wasn't new to us, our dad had given us football pads for Christmas one year. We would go out to the back yard and pretend that one of us were kicking off and the other returning. We would get on either side of the yard and run as fast as we could at each other. The hits were vicious, but we always got up for more. We loved hitting each other and one was always trying to out do the other. I am not proud to say it but Marc was the one who usually conquered but I tried not to let him know it. As the oldest you don't want your younger brother to know that he is getting the best of you.

The coaches always made us do drills against one another and I loved it. We had a blast but we would fight often because of dumb things and it would carry over to the football field. I think that is why we would go so hard at each other, we were mad and we really were giving it all we could to beat the other. One of our coaches once told my dad that we loved to hit and we did.

Another thing that we liked to do was get into trouble. This was the whole point of this whole thing in the first place. Trouble seemed to come natural to the two of us. It was not uncommon to hear people say it was those two Vipperman boys, they did it. That is the reason that even years after Marc and I had moved away we were blamed for holding up the local gas station at night, and everyone believed it. It ended up being my two cousins but they were in my parents car so everyone in town thought that it was Marc and I. We got into quite a bit of trouble and this is where my story really starts.

The Early Years Contd

Thinking back now it doesn't seem like such a big deal. Double doors into the gym with a single pane of glass in each door. I could see kids sitting against the wall through those windows and it seemed like, for just a moment, I was looking through the eyes of a popular kid. Jesse opened the door for me and I walked in looking around like I had never seen the gym before. Jesse led me over to a group that was sitting behind the back board and we joined them. I looked up to the bleachers to see my group all sitting down where they usually sat. I could be imagining that they were pointing and snickering but that is how I remember it. I remember being so mad at that group that I don't remember how things went on the basketball floor that morning before school. They must have gone pretty good though because I never did sit in the bleachers again.

Things really started to change for me because of this change in friends. Jesse and I would bring our skateboards to school and skate during lunch or after school when I didn't have practice. There always seemed to be a group around watching what we were doing and because of it I was becoming more confident. I had always been very outgoing but I wasn't very confident. Now I was exuding confidence and things started to click for me.

I made friends with a couple of girls that I thought had to be the most popular girls in town, Tina and Jolie. The best thing was that they seemed to like hanging out with Jesse and I. It was during this time that I started to not care what people thought of me. The four of us would hang out during school and just have a blast. One day we all stood in an alcove by our shop class and acted like we were mannequins. Everyone thought that it was so funny and we really had a blast with it. Another time we were waiting for a basketball game to start and the opposing teams fans were just showing up. We decided to introduce ourselves to everyone who came in. It was funny but after awhile it got boring so I started introducing myself as a different person from different states to everyone. As one person would walk in I would say "Hi, I'm Clint from Texas!" and to the person with them I would say "Hi, I'm Mike from Florida!". Most of the people would laugh and go on there way but the girls found it funny and during the game I kept having girls come by and introducing themselves just so I could make up another funny name or place that I was from.

I really became someone that I wanted to be during that time. Qualities that I had but wasn't confident enough to use were now coming naturally to me. I began to play this person all of the time no matter where I was. Jesse and I would meet by the school in the morning and we would walk to seminary together. We would get there a few minutes before it started and decide that we should skip it. Well everyone had seen us so when they called roll someone would say that we were there but that we must be ditching. Our teacher would then come looking for us and we had such a blast hiding from him because he would get so mad.

Seminary was at the church in the early morning and we were always getting into trouble for wearing clothes that were not appropriate. Unlike girls who would get in trouble for wearing to little we would get in trouble for wearing our pants to big or some crazy shirt. I had a 26Red t-shirt that I loved, it had a burlesque girl on the back with the company logo. I wore it the first time and my seminary teacher told me I had to turn it inside out and that I shouldn't wear it again. After that I decided that I needed to wear it everyday that I could, to the point that he kicked me out of seminary until I could dress the part. This display of defiance became my new mantra and from that point on I stared into the face of the establishment and gave them the finger.

Jesse and I had an English class together and our teacher was really cool but he seemed to not like us very much. So we would goof off in his class more then we probably should have. One day he gave us some free time so Jesse and I put on our backpacks and sat on the heat register at the far end of the room. We were talking about how cool it would be to skydive when we got the idea to simulate it right there in class. We jumped up on the heat register and jumped off with our backpacks acting as though they were parachutes. We flew around the room doing different maneuvers all the while Mr. Fewkes was yelling at us to stop. We pretended to pull the zip cord and float to the ground while other kids in the class were laughing at us. Jesse and I were sent out into the hall where we had to spend the rest of the period for being disruptive. Another time we decided to drag race our desks while Mr. Fewkes was gone, so we got a couple of kids to race against. One of us sat in the desk and the other pushed. The one pushing would push the desk about five feet or so and stop and see how fast they could get the desk going and if it could reach the wall. It did a few times and when Mr. Fewkes came back to the classroom we had busted two desks and broken a bookshelf. For that we all got a call to our parents and I got in big trouble.

That wasn't the only time that I made a fool out of myself. One day it was raining really hard and there happened to be a puddle between the main building and the annex. I decided that I had to slide through it after lunch right before going to class. Jesse decided that if I was going to then he need to as well. We both ran and slid through this puddle as a group of kids cheered us on. We went to class soaking wet and with little pieces of grass all over. After class I told Jesse that I was going to do that between every class for the rest of the day, and I would have if it wasn't that we ended up getting into trouble about our third time through and being sent home for the day.

The classroom was bigger then Simon had thought it would be. He walked in the door and down a flight of stair about halfway. He stepped into the row of seats and sat down in a chair after taking his messenger bag off and setting it on the floor. Simon looked around at the bare walls and the stage at the front of the room. Off to the left side of the stage was a desk with papers scattered all over it. Behind the desk was a podium and a cart with an over head projector. This wasn't that different from high school Simon thought as the room filled with students.

Simon had settled on attending the College of Southern Idaho because his parents needed him to stick around after high school. He had planned on attending a college on the east coast to get away from the little town he was raised in. For a time he had considered San Diego State because it was the top party school in the west but had given that up because it was too close. Over his senior year he set his sights on Virgina, Florida, and Penn State. One by one rejection letters came and Simon was forced to look at smaller schools where he could be accepted on his average transcript. In late February Simon's dad was in an auto accident and his dream of getting out of town came to a crashing halt. He knew that it was better for him to stay and help his mother but he longed to get out of Wendell Idaho which he had grown to hate since moving there three years prior.

Simon watched as the class filled up with students ranging in age. The thing about a community college is that there are people from every generation in the class. He noticed the freshman because they all looked a little like him. They wore new clothes and had new bags to carry their books in. They all seemed a little nervous, not knowing quite what to expect. Then there were the kids that had been to college for a semester or two. The guys came in with a notebook, a pen and an I don't care attitude as they slumped in their chairs waiting for class to start. They all seemed to wear the same thing; baggy shorts, flip flops, and a wrinkled shirt that looked like they had worn it for a couple of days. The girls were dressed nicely but you could tell that there clothes weren't new. They came in with friends and sat together talking about other classes that they were taking.

The group then took an odd turn, there were several middle aged people sprinkled around the room sitting alone. This set of people was funny to Simon since this was Western Civ 101. This was an entry level class yet there were some old people in it. At the very bottom of the classroom was an old lady who looked to be in her 90's. She sat quietly with no one sitting next to her. Simon thought that maybe she was here to review the teacher but saw that she had the Western Civ book for this class. This was another thing that irritated Simon about going to CSI, it seemed like a glorified high school with older adults and grandparents attending. He wanted to be at a university where all of the students were kids, but no he had to stay in Idaho and make the 30 minute drive to Twin Falls every day to go to school.

Simon sat there stewing about the idea as the course instructor walked in a side door on the stage and walked over to the desk. He was an older gentleman probably mid 60's and moved across the stage with ease. He kind of surprised Simon at first glance but he didn't know why. It wasn't like Simon was thinking he would have Indiana Jones as his history professor but he wasn't expecting an older teacher either. Simon had seen a lot of young teachers at freshman orientation and had thought at that time that professors probably come to smaller institutions to prepare for big universities. Why would anyone stay at a junior college for their entire career? The professor walked back to the middle of the stage and introduced himself as Dr. Howard and then walked off the left side of the stage and started up the stairs handing out the syllabus. Simon took one when the instructor handed a stack to him and passed the rest on. He wasn't happy to be here and he wasn't sure what he was going to get out of this small college. He dreamed of bigger and better things then Idaho and this small junior college. He wanted some excitement, he wanted something to happen.

The early years

It sounded like a good idea at that time but isn't that how all great stories start. No one ever starts a story like "I heard what my buddy was saying but deep down I knew I shouldn't go, so I stayed home" or "my parents would be ticked if they found out so I better not go". No, all great stories start the same with a phrase like "it sounded like a good idea at the time" or "I didn't think we would get caught". My life is full of these phrases, stories, and mischief and I wouldn't change it.

My stories start around the age of 13 or so. Before that I was a great upstanding Mormon youth always going to my church meetings and attending all of my school classes. School came hard for me but I liked going because of recess. I didn't work hard at school which is probably why it wasn't easy for me. Most of my teachers left comments for my parents saying that I was too talkative in class and I was forever being told to turn around and stop talking. I made it through elementary school without too much damage which wasn't easy given the way I looked. I see pictures of myself from my early years and think that it is great that you don't worry about looks when you are that young because I was no model. I had ruddy skin with a lot of freckles. My hair was brown and really thick so it didn't lay down like the other kids, in fact it stood straight up. I guess that is why I kept it shaved for along time. I did grow it out so I could put a part in it while I was in grade school but that looked really dorky. Also when I was in sixth grade my dad gave me a Mohawk that was fairly long. He shaved both sides of my head and left the top down the middle. He also cut designs in the side of my head which was customary for the time at least that is what I tell people when they see the pictures. I would go around flipping my hair back and forth from one side of my head to the other until one day a girl told me it looked stupid and I immediately stopped.

I never really had a lot of friends, and I think the reason for that was because I was a geek. I mean I am still a geek now but I hide it well. There is a picture of me in second grade and I am wearing a Ricks College t-shirt with black pants, that are obviously too small, and slip on shoes that look like Vans but I was not that cool so they are not. This is how I spent my entire grade school and most of my middle school life. I would wear BYU shirts and jerseys to school and people would make fun of me. I also wore hand me downs from my older cousins which I thought was cool but they were all out of style. Hand me downs were an important part of my childhood and I can remember pulling out clothes from a huge garbage bag. My brother and I would fight over who got the Nike t-shirt or who was going to get the Girbaud jeans. I am sure it looked like dogs fighting over the last piece of meat. My grandmother also bought me a pair of light blue jeans that only old men would wear but for a time they were the only jeans that I had so I wore them and kids would make fun of me. I was not into sports and not very coordinated at the time so I didn't play basketball with the kids and I mostly hung out with girls all the time. I loved Star Wars and other sci-fi shows and would regularly check out books about alien abduction and big foot. At the time I hadn't grown to know that these things were not socially acceptable and that if I wanted to fit in with the "cool" kids that I couldn't talk about them. This lasted until I was in the fifth grade and I remember a couple of kids making fun of me and I decided that I wasn't going to say anything anymore because every time I did I got laughed at. Later that same year a kid asked me to play basketball with them during recess and later told me it was because I was pretty cool when I wasn't talking. That lasted for a few years but eventually I had to speak up.

As I maneuvered through the last few years of grade school I became increasingly aware that I was different from the so called popular group that I was trying so hard to become a part of. I wanted to so bad to be asked to birthday parties and hang out with this group of kids that were so much cooler than I was. From the outside it looked as if everything in their lives were perfect and I wanted that yet I was not perfect. I didn't wear the right clothes, I was the oldest so no one was there to show me what to do, I was not the best looking, and my family did not have money. These things were playing against me and I knew that there was not any way that I was going to be able to break through this barrier. I then decided, at eleven mind you, that it was going to take to a lot to make the transition so I resigned myself to the "lower class" of which I would never break free. I made friends in this class all of who were also Mormon and I went to church with. We would hang out and have sleep overs like everyone else but they were not as great and grand as the upper class of kids. We never had pool parties, we never had girl-boy parties, and no one from the upper class ever showed up at our houses to hang out with us. We weren't sad about it at all, we knew where we stood in life and for the most part, we were fine with that.

I had a great time with these guys that I considered my friends but looking back I was a parasite. I didn't bring anything to the relationship and they all knew it, unfortunately I didn't. Not until years later did I realize what was going on. Not even now do I fully understand the complexity of this relationship and how it has affected my behavior, friendships, and relationships with others. I can't explain the friendship that the seven of us had but I apparently was getting more out of it then they were. During the four years that we all were friends we did a lot of things. We made countless snowboarding trips, we played a lot of street hockey, and we did a lot girl watching since that is what you do when you are on the outside of the popular group. We really did have a lot of fun and since we went to church together the fun never stopped until one day it ended for me.

I had played baseball all growing up, from tee-ball to little league and all of my buddies had played too but there comes a time when you have to decide if you want to continue. If you continue practices become more like practice and more competitive and some kids don't want that. I didn't really have a choice considering my dad was my coach. I am not saying that he forced me to play but any coaches kid will tell you that there is some pressure to continue. I wanted to continue but when my friends all decided to stop playing and I questioned whether I should as well. It was hard to make that break since I now had practice and they could go hang out after school. I also started playing football at this time and they didn't so through the spring and fall I was busy with practice and games. It was tough but we would still hang out on weekends and at church but now I was on the outside since I hadn't been in on the newest adventure. I tried to make it up by inviting them to other things. We once had my dad drop us off in Hailey to Rollerblade the paved trails and skate at the skate park. We had a lot of fun and even talked about doing it again but it never happened.

When we reached junior high we were on different tracks. I spent as much time as I could with these guys since it was a new environment but I still had other responsibilities. Through seventh grade things pretty much stayed the same and we continued to hang out but when we hit eighth grade things started to change. I noticed that they would hide from me in the morning before school and during our lunch break. I never really thought it was about me until one morning I caught them watching for me and when I showed up they took off and hid in a class room. We didn't have a lot of classes together but the ones we did they would sit next to each other and I would be left to find my own seat. This year was a hard one for me since I had no idea what was going on with my friends and I didn't have any time to find out either.

During this time I started to skateboard and I quit rollerblading. My brother and I would skate in our driveway every day trying to learn new tricks. We started becoming friends with another skater from Twin named Jesse that went to the same church as us but that didn't go very often. He was my age and we were in a few classes together. We started spending a lot of time together skating around town. I took skating lessons from Jesse since he had been skating for along time and knew what he was doing, I learned more then just skating though. I learned how to dress as a skater, I would wear the biggest pants I could find and cut them off around the bottom of my shoes. I would wear a long sleeve shirt under my short sleeved shirt even if it was hot. I started growing my hair long and parting it in the middle of my head. I learned how skaters treated each other and in turn how they treated those who didn't skate. We were always helping skaters with things like tricks to moving quarter pipes. If a skater needed your help you helped him no questions asked, on the other hand you didn't talk to posers. Jesse really became one of my best friends and we hung out as much as possible.

Jesse really helped me during that time because he had crossed over the popular barrier because there were only a few skaters back then and everybody thought that he was totally cool. My other friends were still pulling tricks on me all time and I was getting really frustrated and confused since we had been friends since we were in grade school. I was fighting a losing battle in my head, I wanted to stay friends with these guys but I knew that they were trying to make a break. I knew that they didn't want me around any more but I didn't have enough confidence to find new friends. One morning I walked into school from seminary and when my buddies saw me they took off and hid under the bleachers. I was devastated and didn't know what to do until Jesse asked if I wanted to go and sit with him on the basketball floor. There were two parts to our gym where everyone hung out before school started. The popular group sat on the floor of the gym around the basketball court and swapped stories and test answers in their Banana Republic shirts and perfect hair. The rest of the school sat in the upper deck of the bleachers and wished they could sit on the basketball floor. From the main level there was a split staircase where you could go up to the bleachers on the left or down to the floor on the right.

I sat there looking up at the bleacher knowing that I belonged up there, but recognizing that this was my one opportunity to make a name for myself.

Simon lay frozen in a ditch just outside of town trying not make a sound. How long had he been here? It had to be at least a couple of hours and yet no one had come looking for him yet. Still he stayed silent in case that tall guy that was chasing him came upon the ditch. Simon hadn't moved since he slid into the ditch at the south end of a potato field in Wendell Idaho. There were not many places to hide here in the desert so when you found one, you used it. It wasn't the first time that had hid in a ditch, he had done it many times while playing games with his younger brother. However this was the first time that he had done so under duress and it was starting to wane on him. Simon thought about what options he had lying there on his stomach in the dirt. In the dark he could make out a tunnel just ahead of him that led under the gravel road on the east side of the field. He strained to see what was behind him without moving any part of himself out of the ditch but all he could see was endless ditch into the night. Simon stayed quiet trying to hear any movement outside of the ditch but the only sound was that of the never ending Idaho wind. Even if someone had been there, the wind would carry the sound away from him like a leaf caught in stream of water. Knowing that he had sat there too long, Simon started to army crawl along the dirt floor of the ditch as quietly as he possibly could. As he got closer he could hear something over the wind, but it was faint and he couldn't make it out. He stopped and listened, whatever it was it was getting louder. At once Simon realized that it was car on the gravel road. Did he dare breach the cover of the ditch to see who it was? Could he take that risk? Simon thought fast and began to crawl as fast as he could toward the tunnel hoping that he could make it in time. Maybe the car was the reason the man hadn't walked upon the ditch, he was in a car looking for him. Simon reached the tunnel and drug himself inside where he lay as the car rumbled over the top. The car was moving slowly and took a long time to get over the pipe in the road and as it was clearing it Simon saw a search light sweeping over the field and then through the ditch. It cut a perfect path through the dark and illuminated the ditch where moments earlier he had sat. The car idled along the gravel road until Simon couldn't hear it any more. It could have been anybody driving around out there, he and his buddies use to drive around with a spot light just for fun. Now those days were over and he had alienated those closest to him. Thinking that it was safe Simon crawled out of the tunnel and sat in the ditch slumped a little as to not disclose his location with his unkempt hair. He sat thinking about his next move rubbing his forehead with his fingers. He need to get out of this town and get out quickly before these guys caught up to him.