That Went Bad Fast
- John Baumeister
- Apr 10
- 4 min read
There was a stretch of time in high school where going downtown to the Oriental or Woods Theatre was the whole plan. Not dinner, not anything else—just kung fu movies. Sonny Chiba, Bruce Lee, whatever was playing. The theaters weren’t nice. They were old, worn down, seats half broken, floors sticky, the kind of place your parents wouldn’t have loved knowing you were in. But that was part of it. It felt a little off, a little rough, and for us, that made it better.
We were in high school. Me, my brother, my best friend Brian, and Chris, who was about four years older than me, which at that age made him the adult whether he actually was or not. He had the car, so that settled everything. We followed him without much thought because that’s what you do when one guy can drive and the rest of you can’t.
It was freezing that night. The kind of cold where your face hurts and your hands don’t really work right. We usually took the train downtown, but there was no chance we were standing on a platform in that weather, so Chris drove. There were no phones, no checking in, no one tracking anything. You left the house and you were just gone for a while, which felt normal at the time. If something went wrong, you figured it out yourself.
We came out of the movie completely wired, like we had just picked something up by watching it. Not that we actually learned anything, but you walk out of a Bruce Lee or Sonny Chiba movie and you feel like you did. We were cold, so we ran. Not trying to look tough, not trying to make a statement, just four guys running down a dark Chicago Loop street because it was freezing and we wanted to get back to the car.
Brian and I jumped into the back seat of the 2-door Capri, heavy doors slamming, still laughing about nothing, still carrying that energy from inside the theater. And then everything lit up. Blue lights, red lights, and a spotlight that came out of nowhere and landed directly on us. A police car pulled in front and blocked us in before we even had a second to think.
The car got quiet immediately. Not because anyone said anything, but because everyone knew this wasn’t nothing. Chris rolled the window down and the officer walked up already annoyed, which, looking back, made perfect sense. It’s freezing, there’s probably real things going on, and now he’s got four guys running around like idiots.
He asked what we were doing down there and why we were running. Fair question. Chris looked at him and said, “Guys, you don’t have to tell him anything.” It wasn’t loud or aggressive, but it didn’t need to be. It was just enough to completely change the situation. I remember thinking right away, what are you doing?
The officer didn’t react right away, which somehow made it worse. He just looked at Chris for a second and then told all of us to get out of the car with our hands up and line up against the wall. Now we’re standing there, hands up, against a freezing stone building, getting frisked. A few minutes earlier we’re watching guys control everything on screen, and now we’re standing there realizing we don’t control anything at all. All I could think was, what are Mom and Dad going to say when they find out?
The officer patted all of us down, but you could tell he wasn’t all that interested in what we had in our pockets. He was still stuck on Chris and what he said. That one line had turned the whole thing into something bigger than it needed to be.
And then, just like that, he stepped back, told us to get back in the car, and said there had been a robbery down the street and he had bigger things to deal with than a group of smart-ass kids. He made it clear he could take us in, call our parents—who had no idea we were even downtown—but he wasn’t going to. He told us to get out of there and not give him a reason to see us again.
We got back in the car and no one said anything for a while. The laughing was gone. The energy was gone. It was just quiet, with all of us replaying it in our own heads.
Looking back, it’s wild how fast that whole thing flipped. We walked out of that theater thinking we had a little edge, like we had picked something up just by watching a movie. We were cool high school kids downtown late at night in the big city without any supervision. And within a few minutes, we were standing against a wall hoping nothing got worse.
It didn’t feel small at the time. It felt like we were one sentence away from the whole night going completely sideways. I’m standing there thinking about my parents getting a call they had no business getting, and Chris… still not backing off, still sitting in it like he didn’t say anything wrong.
We got back in the Capri, the doors slammed, and nobody said a word. Not because we were trying to be dramatic—there just wasn’t anything to say. The heater was barely working, and Chris just sat there like the whole thing was overblown.
We pulled away slow, like if we didn’t draw attention to ourselves maybe the night would just reset. Ten minutes earlier we’re running through the Loop like we own it. Now we’re just four guys in a car making sure we stop at every light and maybe, for once, doing exactly what we’re supposed to.
About Greenland Sharks
Greenland Sharks is a Chicago men's group who value friendship, experiences, and the long swim. Just a crew that shows up. No speeches. No name tags. No nonsense.
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