August 28, 1988

I was 14 years old and it was the day before registering for my freshman year of high school. I went with my 2 friends C and J to stay with our other friend A who lived out on a farm around 10 miles outside of town. A's parents were gone again so this usually meant we would all stay there and hang out. I mean, how much trouble can four 14 year old girls get into in the middle of nowhere when none of their friends can drive anyway?


A little background:

All of our parents thought we were angels and spent the weekends watching TV, playing pool, and talking until all hours of the night. We did these things, of course, but then we always got bored. We needed adventure. Not only did we ride the 3-wheeler that we were instructed to not go near, we rode it with all 4 of us at the same time going through trails in the trees while jumping natural made ravines. We rode it across the highway, through the pastures, and along the country (gravel) roads to the next closest town - I hesitate to even call it a town as it only has ~50 people. (Oh, and the 3 is not a typo in 3-wheeler. Now they call them ATVs and all are required by law to have 4 wheels because the 3-wheelers were deemed too dangerous. ) They weren't kidding, but we were fortunate to not have any "real" injuries on any of our wipe-outs or spills.

For extra fun, we broke out A's brother's motorbike and repeated the process, but with only 2 at a time on this one. We had some common sense.

We rode horses, skinny-dipped in the lake (which we learned later you could partially see from the highway), and had our first tastes of alcohol after A snuck a beer or wine cooler a week from her parent's bar for a couple months and buried them in the trees in a shopping bag. Good God, no wonder that stuff tasted so awful.

Nail painting, phone-talking girly girls and angels we were not. LOL.


Taking it up a notch:

A's parents had an old "field" pick-up. "Field" pick-ups are very old, beat up pieces of crap that only get driven from the farmhouse to the field and to haul stuff around the farm. A's mom had taught her how to drive this truck (which was a stick) the summer before at the ripe old age of 13. It is seriously in the middle of nowhere and she learned while driving it to and from the field. I promise this is not a big deal where I grew up. Because most farm kids ride the school bus, participating in after school activities in high school means that all farm parents would have to pick their kids up everyday for them to participate. To alleviate some of this, school permits were created. After taking a driver's ed. course, a 14 year old who lives more than a mile outside of town can get a driving permit to drive only to and from school each day, but with no passengers.

You see where I'm going with this, right?

Yes, on many occasions we took this old beat up pick-up out on the country roads joy riding. We were young and dumb and having the time of our lives. We drove all over. Another fringe benefit to farm living is that A's parents had their own gas pump. We could carefully mark off how much gas was in the pick-up tank and fill it back up. It was nearly impossible to notice gas missing from the pump. We checked it out - alot.


Back to August 28, 1988:

Tomorrow was the beginning of the third week into our 2-a-day (early morning and evening) practices for volleyball and the day we registered for our freshman year. We had spent the weekend at A's and had once again done all those "naughty" things we shouldn't have been doing. The 28th was on a Sunday and we had the afternoon to kill so out came the old farm pick-up and off we went to meet our classmate Mike who lived a few miles away. While chatting with him along the gravel road, we saw dust tracks coming our way off the horizon. The only people who travel these roads are the ones who live on them so we knew whoever it was also knew A's parents. We jumped in the truck and took off trying to "get away" and hide from whoever was coming down the road. Total 14 year-old drama, huh?

A gravel road mixed with an inexperienced teenage driver trying to outrun someone is a recipe for disaster. We started fishtailing around a curve and before we knew it, we were in the ditch and doing our part to clear the brush as we took out several small trees as the truck rolled and rolled before coming to a halt sideways in the ditch. There was glass everywhere and the fertilizer tank that was bolted in the bed was destroyed. We all scurried to climb out the windows as the doors were jammed and ran up onto the road. The guy who we were trying to hide from stopped to help. He was a friend/neighbor of A's parents. Poor guy was stuck with 4 hysterically crying teenage girls who skipped right over the part of realizing how lucky they were to be alive and went right into how much trouble they were in.

Yup, amazingly enough, we were all fine. C had a small cut on her knee and that was it. The guy told us later that we had rolled the truck 3 times - once front over back and twice on it's side. He did not expect to see any of us jump out of there on our own, let alone find out that none of us had any injuries!!

We all got up and went to volleyball at 7AM the next morning hoping that nobody would find out because we didn't want to be deemed as "bad girls". We, of course, were all grounded for eternity. In fact I think my sentence just ended today if I remember right. LOL.

I so miss those carefree days and all the girlfriend times we had 20 short years ago. I wouldn't want to re-live it all again, but would love that chance to go back and live one of those kind of days again. As complicated and dramatic as everything seemed, I now realize how easy it really was then.

I wish I could say this was my last rollover accident as a teen, but I would be lying. I think my guardian angel worked so much overtime in those days that he is now on strike and letting me fend this IF battle on my own. Stupid teenager.

Thinking of C, A, and J today and hoping they are all well.