Anthony Padilla: It doesn't even cross my mind
that I've done everything possibly illegal up
to this point. I am more than an accomplice...
I'm just a felon.
My name is Anthony Padilla, and this is a little story
about the time I used pool chemicals to create explosives.
Anthony Padilla: It was 2003.
I was living in Sacramento.
The hottest band at the time was Hoobastank.
I wore skater clothes,
liked to shop at PacSun and Zumiez.
I did not surfer skate.
Couple zits on my forehead here and there,
but puberty didn't really get me too bad.
I was in between geeky and someone
that would just be left in the shadows.
I had a small crew of three or four guys.
We love to blow shit up.
Anthony Padilla: I was personally never
the instigator,
but I had this one friend who just loved fire.
He convinced me to take part in fireball tennis.
He just mixed styrofoam with gasoline.
You would dip a tennis ball into this sticky liquid.
You'd pull it out with your bare ass hand, light it on fire,
and then it'd be hit a little tennis ball back and forth.
It would leave these trails of dripping flames.
I don't know how we got away with this.
Anthony Padilla: One day, my pyro friend
who we will just call Ralph,
he has a cool new way to blow things up that doesn't use fire.
So I hop in his car, we go down to the local pool supply shop.
He beelines to this pool cleaner.
He asked me to pay for it. Totally cool.
Then we go to the grocery store across the street
and get some aluminum foil.
I have a couple of bucks on me. All good.
A totally normal thing for two 15 year old boys
holding a gallon of pool cleaner to do.
Anthony Padilla: I have no idea
what's going on at this point,
but he drives me to the local elementary school.
He's chugging this bottle of Mountain Dew,
this two liter bottle, soaking in that Dew-y scent.
And he slams it down and he's telling me...
he's like rip off little strips of this aluminum foil,
roll it into little balls.
So I popped these little aluminum foil balls
into this two liter bottle.
It doesn't even cross my mind that I've done everything
possibly illegal up to this point.
Buy the chemicals, roll up these tinfoil balls, pour the liquid.
All he's done so far is good
as rocks off chugging down a Mountain Dew.
I am more than an accomplice. I'm just a felon.
Anthony Padilla: He tells me, cool,
you're going to have to take off the top of that pool cleaner,
destroy the safety seal they have on there.
And I open it up, poured it into this two liter bottle.
I do it quickly.
I tighten the cap and I jump for cover.
It's Saving Private Ryan up in there.
My nipples are like completely shaved off by the asphalt
and I am ready to just have the goddamn Civil War behind me.
Anthony Padilla: So I'm waiting
and it's been like 10 full seconds.
I look over at my friend Ralph and he looks back at me.
Just you wait. There is the loudest explosion.
It's like a shockwave through the air and I look back
and there are green chunks of plastic flying in the air.
There's some chemicals splashing everywhere.
This bottle cap is flying so high
it's scraped the tip of Zeus' dick.
It was fucking dope.
Anthony Padilla: So I had to spread the cheer
and I told a whole bunch of my other friends
and we did it a couple more times that day.
And it was one of the better days of my 15 years of life.
At the end of the day, Ralph drives me home.
I get out of the car and he's like,
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, can you actually take
the pool chemicals? That would be dope."
Ralph, by the way, had a pool.
He has a reason for this chemical to be on his property.
I did not have a pool.
Is it cool for me to take these chemicals
so my friend doesn't have to? Yes.
Anthony Padilla: I'm not going to put it
in my house. I'm not stupid. So I stash it behind this bush.
It's across the street from my mom's place.
Go to school the next day, everything's fine.
I rave about these cool explosions.
And I'm walking home from school when I turn onto my street
and I noticed there are fire trucks, fire SUVs.
Vehicles there that I've only ever seen on Stranger Things.
There are firefighters running around
and the dudes with the yellow Hazmat suit.
And I see my mom pacing around.
Anthony Padilla: She stops me."Anthony,
something terrible has happened."
Our neighbor, Rhonda, and I were hanging out
and we see this white plastic container
and it seemed like it wasn't supposed to be there.
Rhonda picked it up, she chucks it into the air...
What the fuck Rhonda?
It falls back down to the ground, chemical pours
everywhere into the street and it starts steaming.
It looked like the pits of Hades.
My mom says "I called 911 and the fire department,
they are handling this for us."
Anthony Padilla: So I'm like, "Okay, cool mom,
that sounds great. Let me know how it goes, bye!"
And I beeline it straight to my bedroom.
I am just waiting for someone in a Hazmat suit
to burst through my door
and drag me out to take me to prison.
I sit on my computer for what feels like an eternity
and the whole time I'm just sweating bullets.
And then eventually I hear the fire trucks leave,
all the commotion stops.
So I'm like, holy shit. My mom comes in the door.
"Mom, what happened?" Totally playing it cool.
Oh, it turns out it's just some pool chemical.
And I have not told her to this day.
Mom, if you're watching this, I apologize.
Anthony Padilla: And to finish things off,
I pull up AIM. Ralph is online. Fucking Ralph.
Dude, you will not believe what just happened.
I explained the entire story to him.
And literally his response was sucks to be you.
Fucking Ralph. Fuck you, Ralph.