Just a thought...

[Zeltak]

Operation: Tropicana-land

The green and lush forest surrounded me with its tranquil atmosphere as I bicycled through the stony and dirty path. The large oak trees with its abundance of green leafs opened a few cracks here and there that let in rays of sunlight to pass through. I felt the sun's presence on my face, nature's love warmed my soul. For a second there I had this most mysterious feeling that I would suddenly transcend up to the sky and become one with the clouds. A wandering creature drifting slowly through the territories of the earth.

"Hey hurry up you snail!"

Someone was shouting a few meters behind me. I turned my head around and saw one of my friends, trying to concentrate with my eyes I could spot two more of them at the very edge of my vision. The forest had put my mind at peace and as a result I had completely forgotten that I was bicycling with my friends.

I loved summertime. Not for the fact that the school had given us one and a half month of vacation but because it was summer. That was enough for me, that for a short period of time it was actually warm for a change. That I could just lay down on a grassy hill and look up at the clear-blue sky - preferably with something cold to drink, my best friends and some nice tunes blasting from a large stereo.

And that is exactly what we did. Three persons were lying there on that grassy hill with me. But not just any three persons, they were my most trusted friends. Childhood friends. We had all known each other for over seven years. Every secret, every problem, every success, we had all been there for each other. We knew exactly who we were and who the other three were. Sure I had brothers of my own, but honestly, I valued these three individuals more than anyone else. Biological brothers, bah! That's just a stupid term. You call someone your sibling or your brother because they share your genes, your surname and your blood. But we, we shared the same mind, the same love and carried the same bond of friendship.

We were real brothers.

"So guys..." My friend broke the silence in order to shake us out from our day-dreaming.

"...I don't know about you fellas but I'm pretty damn hungry myself." Everyone suddenly started to laugh, we had expected him to ask some kind of thought-provoking philosophical question that had perhaps spawned from those twenty minutes of laying down on a grassy hill and just watching a few clouds slowly drift by.

"Sure, I could go for one of 'em 'burgers right now." A friend replied back.

"Oh and some icy coke as well!" Another one continued.

We just sat there for a minute under the hot sun and drooled at the very thought of burgers and icy cokes. But sure enough, we hopped on our bicycles and started heading towards the closest outdoor fast-food joint we could find. Orders said and done. We sat on a long dark-green bench and started almost violently shove in those burgers up our mouths. It was pure primitive eating, that type where your senses tells your body that you are so goddamn hungry that you don't give one thought about manners. Full focus on that food and that food only. It didn't took long before we had finished eating and that's when the fun-threatening problem hit our heads. We all realized approximately at the same time, because you could see it on the expression of the others, we had nothing planned to do.

"Well, I might have a funny idea here!" One of my friends spoke out loudly as he had already guessed that we desperately were searching for something to do in the next coming hours.

"Let's hear it then." I replied back swiftly, signaling him that I was interested in what he had to say.

"I met a friend of mine two days ago and as we stood there looking for some nice summer clothes, he told me that he had gone out with some of his pals to swim. Now, not just any place, but the swimming hall, you know that place called Tropicana-land?" Everyone nodded.

He continued. "Well you see, they swam and all as you would expect in a swimming hall, duh. But in reality, they were there for another reason. They had by accident figured out on their former visit that all the locks you could buy from the store there, for the lockers you know, the keys that came with the locks fitted into every other lock you could buy."

"I don't think I follow here, do you mean that if I go and buy a lock from their swimming-store over there, the keys that come with that specific lock, will also work on other locks bought from the same place?" Another friend asked in confusion.

He who was telling us about this whole idea smirked and replied. "Exactly, pal. So what they did was, they bought one of 'em locks right? And went around opening all the other frickin' locks that were purchased from the same place, and stole all the stuff inside the lockers."

"Stealing? You want us to go and steal stuff from other people by abusing this mistake they had done?" I protested.

"Psh, yeah. So what, you afraid or something?" He snapped back in an assertive manner.

"Uh, well I guess, 'cus if we get caught do you have any idea of the consequences we will face?"

"Relax man, the chances of getting caught are so damn small if you just follow my plan."

I laughed. "So you have a plan now as well?"

"Yep." He confidently replied.

"Well, tell us, what is the plan?!" The third friend who had stayed quiet during this whole conversation suddenly jumped in.

"Alright listen up. This is the plan. I assume you all have at least once gone to Tropicana-land before. You know the locker-rooms right? There are two exits, one in to the locker-room itself and one door out to the pools." He paused and looked at us before continuing. "It's good that we are four people in total here. Two of you will watch the exits, the third one will help me open the locker. Now I chose which locker we will open and at what moment we will do this to make sure we don't mess up. Got it?"

My friends nodded in agreement. I was however still skeptical about the idea but you know, group-pressure had its toll and there I was, bicycling towards Tropicana-land to steal from some poor stranger.

The very first step we took inside that place made my heart race and I can assure you my friends were pretty nervous themselves. Of course the girl behind the counter had no idea what was about to happen in the next hour. We bought our tickets and headed towards the locker-room with a quick pace. As we opened the door my friend grabbed my right arm signaling the others to stop moving. "Listen guys, beware of the red-shirts. If one of 'em sees us playing with a locker we are screwed." Now the red-shirts were the life-guard personnel that worked inside the different pool areas. But they also had another job, which was to throw out any troublemakers. We were definitely above their definition of troublemakers.

Two of my friends positioned themselves at the exits pretending to be busy with some random things whilst me and the guy who came up with this whole idea were standing close to a row of lockers. We were waiting for the other people who were changing their clothes to leave the room so we could get to work. Of course this took longer than thirty minutes since when one left, two others came. One of us who were guarding the exit door to the pools frequently walked towards me and whispered to my ear if we could just abandon the whole thing and swim instead, since clearly it was almost impossible to be left alone in that room. But surprisingly, I who was at the beginning the only person protesting, had suddenly changed my mind and thought it was a funny idea.

Finally, the time had come, we were alone at last. It didn't take seconds before my friend reacted and swiftly took out his own key to open one of the locks. And here we were, all looking at that opened locker, expecting huge amounts of valuable treasures like we had just found a chest full of gold. Our eyes met a lonely wallet and a bag-pack tucked in. I grabbed the wallet and quickly shoved it into my right pocket and thought we were done here. But my friend had started opening the bag-pack and searched with his hands to find something inside it. A few seconds later he dragged his hand out, it was holding a cellphone. It seemed to be a very new type of cellphone, he smiled at me and put it in his pocket.

As we were about to close the locker again one of my friends coughed loudly. It was the signal! Someone was about to come. Our hands started shaking almost violently but we managed to push in the lock exactly as the incoming stranger opened the door to enter. Of course we showed no reaction, but on the inside, I could feel my heart beating like it had never beat before. I was even afraid that someone would hear my heart beating, that's how fast it was going.

As we exited Tropicana-land and bicycled a half-kilometer towards an isolated forest I could feel the adrenaline running through my whole body. That was one of the most intense, greatest moments I had ever experienced. Sure we did a bad thing, and we did take a guy's car-license, credit-card, some money and his cell-phone but I still believe to this very day that we were actually never after the reward itself. We were after the thrill. It was the thrill that made that day so memorable for us, it was the thrill that still convinces us that we left that place with no regrets at all.

Thief or no thief, criminal or no criminal, the excitement - was legal.