When approaching the situation rationally and logically, as opposed to legally and practically, no 16-year old youth should ever be allowed to drive a car. Allow yourself to perform a brief exercise and reflect upon the person you were at the age of 16, and come up with a few adjectives to describe that person. I’m fairly certain that most people would use words like “immature,” “Irresponsible,” “brash” and just “down right stupid.”
I got my drivers license two days after my 16th birthday. Within a month, I had wrecked my first car. My family and I spent around two months adjusting the car situation, which eventually ended up with me being the proud owner of a 1991 Honda del Sol, and my dad with a brand new 2002 Volkswagen GTI 1.8 liter turbo. Now, the operative word in that sentence is obviously the word “turbo,” and you don’t have to be a car nut to know that the word usually goes hand and hand with the word “fast.” Well, fast doesn’t even begin to describe this car. Even “fast as shit” may be an understatement.
Now, the GTI was OFFICIALLY my dad’s car, but since he worked out of the house, he very rarely drove it. He gave me my own set of keys to the car and allowed me to drive it pretty much whenever and wherever I wanted. Obviously, I drove his car more than my car, with my poor Honda sitting in our driveway most of the time, except to occasionally be taken to parking lots to do burn-outs and to spin doenuts. One weekend, a friend of mine coerced his parents into letting us stay at the family lake house on lake lanier unattended. Having 6 unattended high-school sophomores at a house on a lake with no parents within 75 miles, it’s a miracle we didn’t burn the fucking thing down. Somehow we all survived and made our way back home after a long weekend.
By the grace of God, Allah, Buddha, Satan, or whoever, none of us died then either.
See, my friend Kerry had a nice Dodge Neon that he had begun to trick out with vehicle modifications. While it was a nice car for what it was, his little Dodge was no match for my dad’s GTI. And I decided to prove that to him. So, down a strip of GA-400, I proceeded to floor it in my dad’s immaculate silver GTI. Slamming gears with the turbo winding and pushing, I proceeded to blow past Kerry at a reasonable 85 miles an hour. Maybe it was adrenaline, or maye because I was “immature,” “irresponsible,” “brash,” and “down right stupid,” I continued to leave my foot againt the pedal that was against the floor board and watched the speedometer tip over 100 miles per hour. And over 105. And 110. And 120, and 125. Once we reached a speed of 134 miles per hour, I finally let off the gas pedal, stomped on the brakes, and somehow, I have no idea how, stopped the car before a redlight that could not of been very far down the road. Andrew, a friend of mine who was in the passenger seat, could only proclaim “holy shit” for about 5 minutes, as I nervously laughed it off. We continued our way home, at a seemling tortise-esque pace, and once there, I placed my dads car in the garage and began driving my little Honda around town again. I mean, the speedometer on that thing only went up to 100….
But, the lack of a speeding car didn’t stop me and my hoodlum friends from having a good time. One particularly boring Friday night, we all gathered at what became to be known simply as “the Park.” Hurt Road Park, as it is known to locals is a small sports complex in Austell, just a couple minutes from the Austell/Smyrna border. The lack of sports-goers and police officers attracted us to this destination, although, we never really had and illegal intent. We just liked to smash stuff. And smash stuff we did.
It started first with a water-balloon launcher we used to launch anything BUT water balloons. Potatoes, apples, golf balls and pears were all shot at rocket pace from one end of the Parks parking lot to the other, with a resounding thud and explosion on the other end. Sometimes we would take old computer equipment and smash it with baseball bats, or simply just drag it behind a car. Whatever seemed like the most fun at the time.
But then we had to learn to deal with the cops. You see, this particular boring Friday was just after Halloween, and while some friends were off at the local Publix looking for interesting things to launch, they found out that pumpkins after Halloween were on sale for quite a bargain. My friends returned with a trunk full of at least 9 or 10 pumpkins, all of which were purchased for just under 15 dollars.
Now I would like to try to Blame my first interaction with a police officer on the foolish clerk who sold two teenagers 10 pumpkins, because, lets face it, how dumb do you have to be to sell 2 teenagers fucking 10 pumpkins? But I guess the clerk didn’t make us smash them all over the parking lot. And I guess the clerk didn’t make that passing by fire truck call the police. And I guess the clerk didn’t tell my friend Martin to lie to the first cop by stating the parking lot was “like that when we got here.” I mean, sure, its not all their fault, but I would like to belive they hold a little bit of responcibility for all of this.
After a 15 minute lecture from Officer McBraire, whom turned out to be quite a spectacular guy, we were ordered to clean up all the pumpkins and dispose of them anywhere but the park. We through them all in my friends SUV, and even though the car has long been sold, I’m fairly certain that is probably still smells like pumpkin to this day. And I cant help but think this whole situation would have been avoided if we weren’t allowed to drive and were reduced to playing Mario Cart 64 in my basement like the years prior.
I love my mom and dad to death, they are the best people on the planet. But they were fucking stupid to put keys in my hand when I was 16
Note: Written to fulfill an assignment in class. I'm not sure if it's all in chronological order, and, thinking about it more, I think we were 17 when all of this happened...
