I went to a huge party the other night in Minneapolis. As I sidled up to the refreshment table and grabbed a handful of corn chips, I overheard some 20-somethings reminiscing about their teenaged years. They were engaged in a fierce competition about which one of them was most delinquent during their wild youth.
"I was so evil, my parents gave up on me and disowned me," a woman in a flowered sundress said.
"Well, I was kicked out of the corner grocery store...for life," said a man in a baseball cap.
"I dyed my hair green and climbed up on the roof of the neighbors' house. They had to call the fire department to get me down," said a woman in tortoise-shell glasses.
Much to my annoyance, the group totally ignored me and didn't ask what crazy things I did as a teenager. I racked my brain to think of something to top their tales. The problem was, I couldn't remember much from those murky and chaotic times. I decided it was best to stick to recent occurrences as I strove to prove to them I was the most outrageous miscreant of them all.
"Well, just last week my friend and I were kicked out of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City," I said.
They all stopped talking and stared at me. I basked in the glow of their attention.
"Really?" the woman in the sundress said.
"Yes," I said, "Really."
"What happened?" the man in the baseball cap said.
I paused for effect before I replied. "The museum was closing for the day. They kicked out everyone, not just us."
The group greeted my story with such stunned silence, I knew I'd won the competition.