The Delta Force Rescue

I’m always amused when a week in Hawaii is held up as the gold standard in vacationing for middle class America. Despite the PR, Hawaiians aren’t really keen on outsiders (“haoles”, as they say). In fact, the last day of public school in Oahu is affectionately known as “kill haole day”, making Mississippi in the 60’s look positively progressive in comparison. Sure, they’re more than happy to take your money, but if you’re not a local, I wouldn’t go anywhere outside Waikiki by yourself. Here is but one example:

My roommate and I were waiting with some other squids at the bus stop across from Pearl Ridge mall (the closest place with something to do off base) when we noticed a car full of locals slowly cruising by, checking us out. It was the middle of the day, and there were more Navy guys than locals, so we weren’t especially worried... until an exceptionally fat girl in the front passenger seat started freaking out and pointing at us.

The car quickly came to a stop and a bunch of huge local boys piled out. The girl also exited, and began literally jumping up and down as she screamed “Dat him! Dat him!” while gesturing wildly in our direction. The leader of this brain trust hustled over and grabbed one of the squids, a scrawny ET-looking specimen, and started yelling at him. The rest of us watched in silence, curious how it would play out.

After a minute we got the basics of the problem: the fat girl was in the mall with her girlfriends when a passing group of haoles with short hair had said something unflattering about their collective weight problem. She got upset, called her boyfriend (and his friends, of course) and had since been cruising around looking for the haoles in question. The scrawny guy kept protesting his innocence (all us squids look the same to the locals), but it looked like they were getting ready to mess him up bad.

Perhaps the number of other squids waiting there made them rethink their original plan. I’m not particularly violent, but I wasn’t about to let some 19 year old sailor get lynched right in front of us. The boyfriend left to try and call the cops at the nearby gas station (ah, the days before cell phones!) while leaving the ET-ish guy in the care of the girl. She proceeded to slam him repeatedly into their car, while screaming “You frightened me! You frightened me!” at the top of her lungs.

Unbeknownst to the locals, one of the ET’s friends had slipped away when the excitement started, and managed to find someone he knew with a car in the mall. While the boyfriend was away, they screeched up to the bus stop and executed a perfect Delta Force rescue: One guy hopped out and opened the doors while the second guy ran over, rescued the ET from under the fat girl. Then both guys threw the ET in the back seat and piled in after him. Ten seconds later and they were burning rubber, headed towards the base.

The girl, seeing her prey escaping, went running after her boyfriend at the pay phone. He came charging up and made a big show of running after the car on foot, at least until he remembered he had a car. Then they loaded back up and raced after the squids, leaving the rest of us with something to talk about until Da Kine Bus finally showed up.

Well, when we got to the base, the locals’ car was halfway up on the sidewalk (it looked like they may have tried to run the gate) and the marines had all the occupants lined up on the fence and were handcuffing them. The ET and his buddies were on the other side of the gate, and someone from the base police was taking down their side of things. Unfortunately, there’s a good chance they still got in trouble, as the base CO went out of his way to maintain good relations with the community, even if it meant offering up a few virgins for sacrifice (again, I’m not positive he was an ET, but I’d put money on it).

He’s just lucky his buddies saved his ass, whether he was guilty or not. There were always stories in the paper about a gang of locals just totally fucking up some military guy out in town, more or less because they could. Anyhow, the moral of the story is simple: never scare a fat girl.