The All Nighter

 

I think movies like ” Ferris Bueller ” gave high school kids a lot of ideas about trying to get away with fun things without getting caught. Over the long run, I believe our wild child Tamara tried them all.

 

 

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The All Nighter

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One Thursday evening in June in 1995, our Daughter Tamara, who was a Senior in high school at the time, told us she was going out with some of her girl friends for the evening. I told her not to stay out too late and she just nodded as if she had acknowledged what I said. She took off in her Jeep Wrangler to pick up her friends and we told her to be careful. We went to bed about 10:30 PM as usual. Pam woke me up about 2 AM and told me Tamara never did come home last night and we both got in gear and started calling her friends she went out with. Neither one of their parents were concerned because they had told them they were spending the night with a friend. We called the friends house where they were supposedly spending the night and the parents knew nothing about it. Now we were getting seriously worried, so we talked the police and the highway patrol and asked if their had been any vehicle accidents reported and they both said no. We then called the ER and Hospital to see if she might have been admitted there. She had not. By now we could see her laying in a ditch somewhere bleeding to death after she rolled her jeep some where out on one of the back roads around town.

 

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By this time it was 4 AM and we had heard nothing. Frantic by now, we decided to drive around town and the back roads  to see if we could spot her Jeep Wrangler anywhere. So we got in our car and started driving. We looked everywhere we could think of to look and when we got to our house about 7 AM, she pulled up behind us in the driveway. She was all perky and happy and we both lowered the boom on her about staying up all night without even bothering to let us know anything. I immediately took her Jeep keys away and told her she was grounded for two weeks.

 

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We then gave her the third degree to see where she had been. It seems that a boy she knew had cooked up an all night camping trip at his parents ranch and set up tents and music and secured beer. Tamara and about 20 of their friends had gone out there and did some mudding in her jeep, and then had an all night party. She said she knew I would not let her go, so she just didn’t tell us. I said don’t you think we would be worried about you and she said no I can take care of myself. To this day she still thinks she was in the right. I told her she at least should have told us she was spending the night with a friend so we wouldn’t have panicked when she didn’t come home. She said I don’t lie to you guys, do you want me to start doing that. That was hard to answer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I guess the pain of not having her Jeep for two weeks was enough to prevent the Over Nighter from happening because it never happened again or she did tell us she was going to spend the night with a friend and we just didn’t know it. Calling all her friends parents looking for Tamara also resulted in many of her friends getting grounded, So they may have worked out a system so other frantic parents wouldn’t rat them out. I know when they had parties at someone’s house when their parents were away, they always parked two blocks from the party house and they all chipped in to clean up when it was over.

 

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Thanks for reading The All Nighter,
Bill