It is the middle of the day. A group of friends and I jump the fence surrounding a seaport. Security is nonexistent. There are no cameras, no police - there is no one in the port but us.

We run under a canopy of idle gantry cranes to a concrete pier. The facility is tiny, as far as seaports go. It is the watery equivalent to a neighborhood municipal airstrip, but also is home to several factories. Not too far along the curl of the bay, the smokestacks of a petroleum refinery spout flame into the sky like giant pilot lights.

Moored alongside the pier is a flat-top freighter. Interestingly, this freighter is low-slung, with its deck level to the pier. This is peculiar, as most freighters are built to float high above the waterline - take it for what it’s worth, it’s a dream, after all.

We cross the gangplank and steal away onto the ship. The crew is nowhere to be found. The deck is empty except for a about a dozen cardboard packages, each the size of a large watermelon.

Our group sets off to work the mischief we’ve come here to do, which is to reenact the events of Boston Tea Party. We make quick work of the parcels, and before too long all of them are floating in the brackish water.

Our devious deeds complete, we make a break for home. I stop after a few steps even as my friends are already scaling the perimeter fence. Standing on the concrete pier, I notice that one of the parcels we had tossed into the water was addressed to me. Pasted onto it was a letter I had written that had been stamped “Return to sender.” I focus with razor sharpness on my home address emblazoned on the envelope.

Paranoid thoughts steal into my mind. I’m really in trouble now - when the police arrive to investigate, they’ll get my street address from those packages, and somehow know that I was responsible for trespassing in the port facility. So that’s when I do what I’d felt heretofore was unthinkable - I sit down on the pier and dangle my legs over the edge, then slide off and land in the water.

Surprisingly, the water is shallow, rising up to about my waist. The water is brown and perfectly opaque, topped with that soap bubble sheen you get when mixing petroleum and water. I am thoroughly disgusted.

I wade through the sludge, keeping up a vain attempt to have as little of me touch the water. Once I get within reach of the packages, I scoop them up into my arms, snatching up the ones addressed to me and leaving the others.

All of them have my name on them.

“Crap!” I say, slapping the water with my palm. At just that moment I clap my jaws shut. It wouldn’t help to have someone hear me, nor did I want to risk accidentally ingesting some of the sludge I was wading in. A mental checklist of carcinogens flashes through my mind. My skin prickles.

I corral the floating parcels and wade back to the pier. That’s when I realize that there is no ladder.  The dockside is a sheer vertical face that rises well over my head. With my arms extended, I can just barely curl my fingers over the edge of the pier.

Knowing I’ve already put myself through too much to leave without the parcels, I throw them over my head onto land. Then, in a feat of superhuman strength (at least for me), I leap up, catch the lip of the wall with my hands, and haul my dripping-wet body out of the water.

I flop onto my chest atop the pier, roll onto my back, panting for breath. I am winded. The industrial stink leaves a coppery tang in the back of my throat. I scramble to my feet and reach for the packages so I can make my getaway.

Inexplicably, the packages have become several times heavier. Mind you, only a moment ago they floated on the surface of the water, and I did just throw them up to the pier from below, but now I can hardly budge even the smallest one. My only explanation for all this is that the packaging must have been made of oil for it to float so easily on the water below.

My ears perk to the sound of distant sirens drawing nearer. Forgetting the packages, I sprint - sneakers sopping wet and gushing all the way - to the perimeter fence and the alleyways beyond.

The old Buick was built like a tank - solid steel slicked over in weathered stoplight red paint. The car was eighteen years old, literally and figuratively.

Literally, in that the vehicle had more than crossed that age when its parts didn’t work like they did when new. In car years, which are shorter even than dog years, the Buick had reached the point in its life when it would have to make regular visits to its pharmacist for Viagra.

Figuratively, in that the car was by rights a teenager - a moody one at that - and the parts that still worked gave you attitude when you prodded them into action. Stomping the brake elicited frustrated groans from the front-wheel discs. The car would deign to stop when it felt was right, regardless of how hard you stood on the pedal. And when we finally did get the brakes fixed the shocks went bad. Mashing the pedal locked the tires like a vice, but the inertia of the two-ton rolling mass hurled the car (and its passengers, and everything in its cabin) careening forward at a thirty-degree decline.

It was great fun for us, as we always wore our seatbelts. Our passengers who didn’t wear theirs never saw the humor, especially the guy whose front teeth got embedded in the dashboard.

Toeing the brake sent the Buick into a sheer nosedive. Eventually, the tires would dig in and bring the car to a halt, but not before screeching ten car lengths down the pavement with the Buick’s trunk in the air. On hitting a dead stop, the sudden reversal of force would buck the car’s front bumper into the air, sometimes so hard that its front tires would pop up off the asphalt. Fifty-Dollar Hydraulics, we called the effect, because that was what the brake job had cost.

In retrospect, we should have known better than to expect much from a fifty-dollar brake job. It was probably not the best idea we’d had, because the Buick, old as it was, was probably worth as much. Even so, we were eighteen then, too, and we had that in common with the car. It was something we could bond over.

Summertime rolled around. School let out, and we were without cash or anywhere to go, and sitting in a car worth more in parts than intact. Sitting shotgun in the red Buick with my friend at the wheel, we coasted down suburban streets in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood. Up ahead on the right was the supermarket where we’d occasionally get lunch between classes. It was 3:00 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon, and the parking lot was empty save for a half dozen cars and twice as many shopping carts scattered across the pavement. A teen in a green apron collected the carts into a long train while his co-worker hustled down the pavement for the lone stragglers further afield.

My friend cut a sharp right off the roadway and pulled into the lot, sending the Buick’s tail into a shimmy. He punched the gas and the tires spun, catapulting the car’s rear into a crescent-moon power slide. The teen pushing the train of carts threw his hands in the air and leaped backward as the Buick smashed through the line. Shards of shopping cart baskets fell like stainless steel rain.

The Buick recovered from its one-eighty turn, spun to a halt with its tires whirling in place. Engine roaring, tires flailing, the Buick lurched forward, hesitant, testing its prey like a bull pawing the dirt in anticipation of a charge. In its sights was a lone shopping cart.

Like a spring released, the Buick launched forward once the tires caught asphalt. We were pressed into our seats as the cabin went skyward - all the power to the rear wheels bucked the front end airborne. The car bobbed on its chassis as its acceleration leveled out and we hit thirty miles per hour halfway down the length of the plaza.

My friend leapt in his seat and came down onto the brake with the full weight of his body. The car shuddered with the rapid reversal of force, its inertia dragging it along, kicking and screaming, even while it dug its heels in to stop. I slid up and out of my lap belt, was tossed against the dashboard and split the roof-mounted fold-down mirror in two with my face. Then I was thrown back against my seat again, snapping the vertical seatback into the reclining position as the car stopped.

The Buick must have hopped several feet off the ground, because in our windshield was nothing but sky. A blur of chromed metal soared up and over us as the shopping cart our fighting bull of a Buick had hooked went airborne. The Buick’s front bumper had caught the shopping cart in the sweet spot between the underside of its basket and its lower brace, catapulting it no less than fifty feet into the air. The cart soared, tumbling, in a near-vertical path, disappearing for a heartbeat as it passed in front of the sun. Its fall was cut short when its basket got caught in the bough of a nearby tree. It swayed there, dinged and dented, too hurt to come down, and too insulted to do anything but stay where it was.

The store manager, a squat, balding man whose scalp had migrated over the years to his hairy forearms, had seen everything. He ran three paces from the supermarket’s front doors and stopped short when he beheld the chaos we’d caused.

We gunned it for home and cut a hard turn around the cul-de-sac where my friend lived, our tires tracing mud runnels across his front lawn. He mashed the brake and skidded the Buick into his garage, which - thankfully - was open by the time we arrived. We rolled down the garage door and hoped the cops hadn’t seen us.

Swapping the red Buick for our bikes, we pedaled back to the supermarket and got there twenty minutes later. The two kids from before were still out in the lot, one of them with a push broom and dustbin, scooping up bits of those shopping carts we had reduced to slivers. The other kid held a push broom too, except he used his as a prod to try to coax the shopping cart out of its tree. He’d have sooner gotten the cart down if it were a cat in a tree and he’d called the fire department, as the cart was a good foot or so above the end of his broom, even when he stood on tiptoes.

All the while the manager stood under the cart in the tree, shaking his head and throwing his hands up in exasperation.

Who better than he, an authority figure, to serve as our referee, and his throwing his arms up signified nothing less than that our field goal attempt had been successful.

Us: three points. Supermarket: zero.

WARNING: The beverage we are about to describe is believed to contain an absurd amount of caffeine. It is dangerous, and you should not drink it. It may kill you. If it doesn't kill you, it likely won't make you stronger, despite Friedrich Nietzsche's claims. It may hurt you. Do not concoct, ingest, or serve this beverage to others, or allow anyone to do the same. We take no responsibility for any harm that may befall you or others in connection with this beverage.

The coffee bar guys in the employee cafeteria know their stuff. You want it black, no sugar, no cream? No sooner said than done -- they'll set a steaming mug of fresh roast right on the counter, just for you. Slap down a five-spot and they'll make a cappuccino to order, with the whipped cream and cinnamon to boot. Tea? You bet. And do they know espresso? How silly of you to ask.

Their drink-making prowess goes further than the chalkboard sign above the bar is long, and that's saying a lot. I counted a dozen types of drinks before I gave up counting. Yet for all their knowledge, there's a drink that only a select few know how to make. It's rarely ordered, and justifiably, because it's not on the menu. More so, because it's killed the odd summer intern or two over the years.

Although the exact formulation is not known (nor are we permitted to divulge that information, on our lawyers' orders), the beverage is essentially this: strong black tea brewed in a cup of steaming black coffee, with two shots of fresh espresso stirred in.

We call it "The Nightmare," because after one of those, you sure aren't sleeping.

The afternoon had been uneventful. I made a right turn and rolled into heavy traffic just before the T-intersection at 57th avenue. That should have been the first sign something was off.

The dashboard clock read 2:36. Traffic was never so thick at this intersection so early in the afternoon. Hell, it wasn’t even a through-street. This roadway was a traffic artery that dead-ended at the edge of a neighborhood airport. Most days at this hour, you could lie down in the street and nap uninterrupted until the evening rush, when the rich moms in their SUV’s came to pick up their tots from day school.

Something else caught my eye. A new yellow caution sign had been put up: Warning! Dangerously Excessive Noise Levels Ahead.

Dangerously excessive. I chuckled at the thought. What traffic jargon genius thought that one up? I snapped a picture of it with my phone’s camera, making a mental note to upload it to that comedy website that consumed so much of my time at work. Meanwhile, João Gilberto sang a duet with his guitar: “Chega de saudade, a realidade é que sem ela não há paz...”

The earth shook. My phone tumbled out of my hand and onto the passenger seat. There was a distant hiss, like water coursing through long-dry pipes, and then a dull thud. A shrieking missile shot out of an underground silo, trailing a fiery tail like a comet splitting the skies in its passing.

The cars ahead lurched forward, zigzagging haphazardly to get away before the missile touched ground.

The rocket slammed into the open field at the airport’s outer fringes. Dirt hailed down onto the passing cars as a tiny mushroom cloud blossomed just within the airport’s perimeter fence.

Times must really be tough when the municipal airport in an upscale neighborhood has to lease some of its land to a munitions proving facility just to get by.

A cacophony of horns blared. Cars elbowed past each other to flee the intersection. A semi-truck hopped the center median and roared past the gridlock, stripping the side view mirrors off of several luxury sedans in its path. Meanwhile, chartered jets headed for the airport runway veered in sweeping arcs as the air went thick with rockets.