I grew up in the 1990s, a time when dial-up internet was the height of technology, and "Google" was just a funny-sounding word. When I was 18, I had a red Pontiac Grand Am—a car I was immensely proud of. It was my second car, and to my teenage self, it was the epitome of cool.
One fateful night, my friends—let's call them Darren and Ted—and I decided to hit the backroads, and, as young geniuses often do, we figured a beer or three would be the perfect companions for our adventure. One of my friends' dads owned a bar, so we made a pit stop in the backroom and stocked up like we were prepping for the apocalypse.
As we were getting ready to head out into the countryside, we ran into a female classmate, Macy, who was just too cool to say no to an impromptu countryside cruise. With Macy on board, we set off, oblivious to the fact that we were about to embark on a night full of terrible decisions.
We hadn’t been on the road long when the weather decided to turn on us. Freezing rain began to fall, turning the gravel roads into a skating rink. I was creeping along at a lightning-fast 15 mph, feeling pretty proud of my cautious driving, when headlights appeared in the distance. As the car approached, it became clear that it was a cop. Just as we pieced that together, the dreaded flashing lights turned on.
Now, I didn't know why the cop had lit us up, but I was certain I didn’t want to stick around to find out. Four underage teens with a car full of alcohol? Yeah, not a scenario I wanted to explain to my parents. So, I did what any 18-year-old with zero sense and a lot of adrenaline would do—I hit the gas and hoped the cop wouldn’t follow.
Spoiler alert: He did.
With Ted and Darren egging me on like we were in a low-budget action movie, I floored it. The cop was gaining on us, and I was more terrified than I'd ever been, but somehow, the peer pressure made it feel like fleeing was a brilliant idea. Up ahead was a highway crossing, the kind where the road just drops off a few feet. Any rational person would have stopped, but I was 18, invincible, and stupid.
The highway loomed ahead, and with icy roads under us, we hit it going about 70 mph. We practically launched into the air like we were auditioning for the next "Dukes of Hazzard" movie. By some miracle, we didn’t crash. We watched the rearview mirror, praying the cop wouldn’t follow our Evel Knievel stunt.
To our immense relief, the cop stopped, turned off his lights, and wisely chose the highway over our icy roller coaster. In hindsight, this set a bad precedent, because it gave me the utterly wrong impression that running from the cops was a viable option. (I may have tried it two more times after that, but that’s a story for another day.)
Once I managed to stop the car and catch my breath, with my heart doing its best impression of a jackhammer, we all sat there in stunned silence. Eventually, someone suggested we break the tension with a game of Truth or Dare—a terrible idea, but par for the course that night.
When you’ve got a pretty girl in the car and a couple of knucklehead friends, Truth or Dare quickly spirals out of control. The final dare that ended the game (and almost ended me) came from Ted, who dared me to ride on the hood of the car with my nose touching the bumper while he drove to the next intersection.
In a moment of bravado fueled by equal parts stupidity and testosterone, I agreed. Climbing onto the freezing cold hood, I got as close as I could to the bumper, but before I could say I couldn’t quite reach, Ted floored it. We rocketed down the road at 70 mph, and let me tell you, 30 seconds on a hood at that speed feels like an eternity.
My hat flew off, and in a brilliant move, I told Ted to back up so I could retrieve it. Grabbing onto the open driver’s door, I skied along the icy road until I grabbed my hat. Everyone said I was crazy, but all I could think was that Ted was even crazier for driving that fast with someone on the hood. Either way, my reputation as the crazy one was firmly established.
After that, we decided to slow down and cruise at a more respectable 15 mph, aiming to reach the levee by the St. Francis River on the Missouri-Arkansas border. We were almost there when the road turned to dirt, full of potholes big enough to swallow a small car. Rain had turned them into mini lakes, and any self-respecting Southerner knows you either floor it and don’t stop or turn around. I’m not a "turn around" kind of guy, so I hit the gas.
We somehow made it to the foot of the levee, but just when I thought we were in the clear, the car started sliding into a ditch. Luck, or maybe sheer stupidity, was on our side that night, and we managed to crawl our way up the levee. I had to stop at the top because the windshield was so covered in mud that the wipers couldn’t move it. With nothing to clean it but our hands, we did our best, but the ice made everything a challenge.
Deciding we’d pressed our luck far enough, we headed for the nearest car wash, about 30 miles away. Two miles from the car wash, the Pontiac finally gave up the ghost. Panicking at the thought of calling my dad to rescue us, I ordered everyone out to push. It was 2 a.m., and in a stroke of chivalry, Ted jumped behind the wheel, leaving Macy, Darren, and me to push the car nearly two miles.
Just before we got to the car wash, a truck full of guys our age pulled up and helped tow us the rest of the way. I washed the car, getting most of the mud off—except, in my exhausted and possibly still tipsy state, I forgot to wash the engine.
The next day, my dad and I returned to retrieve the car. He popped the hood, and there it was—an engine caked in mud, telling the real story of our wild night. My dad gave me that look, the one all parents have, full of disappointment and mild amusement. I came clean about most of what had happened, but I still left out a few details. Some things are better left unsaid.
In my life, I’ve made more than my share of bad decisions, but I don’t think I’ve ever made as many in one night as I did then. Looking back, I realize we were lucky—very, very lucky—to have survived that night with nothing more than a muddy car and some stories to tell.
