My high school friend Charlie was a child prodigy. After college, he wrote code for NASA to track space capsule trajectories.
He was very proud of his mom’s new car, a Plymouth Valiant two-door hardtop. With a four-speed transmission and slant-six engine, it could give larger cars a run for their money.
One Friday night, I slept over at Charlie’s house. As usual, we watched a little TV and played some games.
Our conversation, of course, led to taking his mom’s new car out for a spin. At midnight, Charlie asked his mom for the keys. She refused, saying, “I don’t want you two characters taking my new car anywhere. You are not to drive it, and that’s final.”
Then she went to bed. Charlie and I grinned and nodded to each other.
Thirty minutes later, we crept by his mom’s room. We could hear her snoring softly. We assumed that meant, “Why don’t you two go for a ride in my new car?”
We tiptoed downstairs to the garage and raised the creaky garage door. We thought about starting the car but didn’t want to risk waking her. We decided we should push the car out of the garage and onto the street. Then we could start the engine and quietly cruise away.
Charlie reached into the car, released the parking brake and shifted the transmission into neutral. We grinned at each other, celebrating our obvious combined intelligence.
Did I mention that the driveway sloped up to the street? Together, it took all our strength to push the car up Charlie’s driveway. Charlie reached in through the driver’s window, grabbed the steering wheel and straightened the wheels.
Finally the car was on the street, ready for us to go cruising. There were only a few minor problems:
- Charlie lived on a hill.
- The car was in neutral.
- The emergency brake was released.
- No one was inside the car.
We experienced the law of gravity. The driverless car began slowly rolling down the street. I thought I could stop it by standing in front and pressing on the hood. Bad idea. The car began pushing me down the street. To avoid being run over, I jumped to the curb.
Charlie whispered, “What’s wrong with you? Pushing it won’t stop it. Here’s how you do it.” He stuck his right foot in front of the left-front wheel. The car was slowly moving down the street. Perhaps Charlie thought he could trip the car or that his foot would act as a speed bump.
Whatever he thought, he was wrong. The car ran over his foot. It was like watching a slow-motion horror movie. Charlie wanted to but didn’t dare scream, because he was afraid he’d wake up his mom. Instead, he performed a colorful dance on his left foot.
I laughed so hard I fell down. I rolled over onto my side, so I wouldn’t be hit by the driverless car.
The car was picking up speed. Charlie dived head-first through the driver’s window. He turned the wheel slightly to the left. That pointed the car toward the curb. I thought, “Brilliant, Charlie! The car will hit the curb and stop.”
But by now, the car was going too fast. It bounced into Charlie’s side yard. I watched the car go by with Charlie’s legs waving up and down outside the driver’s door. I could see his hands moving the steering wheel, but he couldn’t see where he was going because his head was in the driver’s seat.
The car headed toward the neighbor’s hedge. In slow motion it mowed a path through the hedge. Charlie looked over his shoulder just in time to see his neighbor’s hedge go by. He reached up and yanked on the handle of the emergency brake. That caused the rear wheels to lock. The locked wheels began plowing parallel ruts through the neighbor’s side yard.
After plowing 10 feet of the neighbor’s side lawn, the car finally came to a stop. Charlie climbed out and surveyed our handiwork.
He said nothing. He got into the car, started the engine and continued driving forward across the neighbor’s lawn. He mowed down a couple of flowers in the front yard, jumped the curb and made it back into the street. He drove back to his house and parked in the garage.
We picked small branches from the neighbor’s hedge out of the grill. We got some car polish and fixed a couple of paint scratches. Pretty soon, the car was good as new.
The neighbor’s hedge and side yard were another matter. Since the hedge had been bent, not broken or uprooted, it was pretty easy to push it back upright. To take care of the tire tracks in the lawn, we did a little dance on both sides of the ruts. That leveled things out pretty well.
I decided I’d had enough fun at our sleepover. I went home.
The next morning, I drove over to see the aftermath. I found Charlie talking with his good-natured neighbor, who was surprised that his hedge looked different and that someone had been driving through his side yard. Charlie’s response: “Kids. You never know what they’ll do.”
Charlie and I assumed no one would find out what really happened. Of course, we were wrong. First, the across-the-street neighbor came over to ask Charlie’s mom what we were doing with her car in the street after midnight. Next, his mom examined her car and found scratches and pieces of hedge that we had missed. Finally, she called my mom, which set off a whole new chain reaction. That was our last adventure with Charlie’s mom’s new car.
The next time you go for a ride, make sure someone is in the driver’s seat and don’t forget gravity.
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