{"id":135,"date":"2014-09-13T15:04:42","date_gmt":"2014-09-13T15:04:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/how-to-write-a-memoir.com\/?p=135"},"modified":"2014-09-14T00:34:06","modified_gmt":"2014-09-14T00:34:06","slug":"joyride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/how-to-write-a-memoir.com\/?p=135","title":{"rendered":"Joyride (Photos Included)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Scary<\/a>\"Tara<\/a>\"Grandpa's<\/a><\/p>\n

**All of my stories are based on true events**<\/p>\n

I was a child of the eighties and wiser than most. My best friend Tara and I were 3 months apart. I joke to this day that I’ve known her since she was born because she was also my first cousin.<\/p>\n

Tara was a lot taller than the other kids our age. I remember her towering over everyone even in kindergarten.
\nThe summer of 1982 I spent the night at her house like most weekends. She either stayed at my house or vise versa. Her dad had gone out on a date, her older brother was out with friends. We were bored. My grandfather on my mother’s side had just passed away earlier that year and his huge Red and white Thunderbird was passed down to my mom and her siblings. It kind of made it’s rounds between the family. My mom had it a few months before when her car was in the shop. My mom took my brother and I to school in it that week her car was in the shop. I remember that I could literally lay in the back seat still have room. The white leather seats really impressed me and since it was driven by my grandfather all of those years, it had the perpetual smell of stale cigarette smoke.<\/p>\n

That car was very big and intimidating but the bright red and white colors attracted me. Tara and I walked around outside and shot some hoops, all the while I kept staring at the car.
\nAs it began to grow darker outside, we decided to go back inside. That’s when I got my nerve up.<\/p>\n

“Hey, did your dad leave the keys to the car?”<\/p>\n

Tara was pouring us some Kool Aid and responded without even looking up, “He always hangs the keys by the door, are they there?”<\/p>\n

I remembered the key had a star-like emblem on it and noticed them right away. I literally got butterflies in my stomach when I saw them!<\/p>\n

I held up the keys and said, “Yeah, they’re here…wanna go for a ride?”<\/p>\n

Tara’s eyes got really big. “Do you even know how to drive?!”<\/p>\n

“Yeah, I’ve been driving since I was TEN!” Which was true. My Nana
\non my dad’s side used to take me and my cousins on back roads and let us drive her Gremlin. She even gave me her Herizon when she got a newer car and said it was mine for when I got my driver’s license. We had it parked at my house and my dad would start it up every once in a while but at 12, the car already cramped my style!<\/p>\n

Tara and I drank our Cherry Kool Aid and talked about where we would go and what we would do as I opened the car door and took a deep whiff.
\n“It still smells like cigarettes, like grandpa.” I said with my eyes still closed. Tara nodded agreeing with me. I sat in the driver’s seat and noticed right away that I had to adjust the seat. I moved the seat as close as I could to the steering wheel and my feet finally touched the pedals but I was too short to see! Tara noticed the problem right away and ran back inside. She came out with a sofa cushion. I got out of the car and strategically placed the sofa cushion on the driver seat then got back in. Perfect fit. It was like I was MADE TO DRIVE THAT CAR! We were set to go!<\/p>\n

Tara went to close the door to the house and opened the passenger door and told me, “I left the TV on incase my dad comes home.”<\/p>\n

I turned the key and put my big toe on the brake as I put the car in reverse. We backed out of her driveway with ease and our “Kool Aid Smiles” and started down the road. I decided to take all the back roads I knew, which eventually took us to the next town. I had no real plan but I did not let Tara know that, nor that I was getting scared…this was a lot different than driving with Nana! There were more cars! There were street signs and street lights. I knew enough from riding with my parents. I knew red meant STOP and green meant GO and that yellow meant “GO REALLY FAST!” I was nervous though!<\/p>\n

We found ourselves in the middle of downtown San Marcos which was twice the size of our small town and that’s when Tara excitedly said, “MAGIC COIN! Let’s go to MAGIC COIN,”.<\/p>\n

Magic Coin was an arcade that we would hang out at when we would tell our parents to drop us off at the movies. Once we saw them drive off, we would cross the street and go play video games all night with the money they gave us to go to the movies. More importantly, cute guys hung out there…<\/p>\n

I got my bearings and knew I had to go back toward downtown. I knew where it was but not what roads I needed to take to get there and we found ourselves going the wrong way down the ONE WAY street! We both screamed as we saw a bunch of headlights coming towards us! I pulled off to the side to let the cars pass. Magic Coin was right across the street but we were facing the wrong way. After almost getting killed, we both decided it would be best just to go home!<\/p>\n

I was still breathing hard but gathered my composure and put the car in drive. I looked at the dashboard to make sure I was drive and I was but we were also on EMPTY!
\nI asked Tara nonchalantly, “Do you have money?”<\/p>\n

Tara said, “Yeah I have FIVE DOLLARS,”. I put my hand out and told her, “Well we are on empty, we will need to go get gas then we are going home!”<\/p>\n

Tara put her head down. “My Five Dollars is at home.”<\/p>\n

My heart sank, not only did we almost get hit head on, now we were about to run out of gas…we were in a lot of trouble.<\/p>\n

I turned the car around to where we were going the right way down the ONE WAY street. While stopped at red light, we simultaneously turned back to take a look at The Magic Coin, knowing we would not be going there after all. As the light turned green, I was making the sign of the cross praying that we got home running on empty but more importantly praying that IF WE DID run out of gas that we would already be passed the scary bridge. That bridge was in a scene of the 70’s movie “Race with the Devil.” We had to drive under that bridge then cross a very scary narrow bridge. After that, we had to drive by “Five Mile Dam” where adults would hang out to drink until the cops ran them off.. We had our drive cut out for us. Sure, it would have been easier and quicker to take the highway but I had yet to drive on a highway.<\/p>\n

We turned down the scary road and I held my breath and mashed on the gas to try to get through the scary part as fast as possible. We even made it passed Five Mile Dam, we were on the home stretch.<\/p>\n

Tara broke the silence, “What are we going to say if my dad is home?”<\/p>\n

I thought about it and really had no answer. I knew we would be in big trouble but I didn’t think her dad would tell my mom. I shrugged and said, “The truth, I guess. We took the car. We won’t do it again!”<\/p>\n

We both let out a sigh of relief when we turned into Tara’s road. We pulled into the driveway and stopped the car. We both sat in silence then I said, “Thank GOD!” We got out and went inside, I had to go back for the sofa cushion! I placed the keys back on the key rack by the door. I was careful to make sure they were on there they way I had found them.<\/p>\n

Tara and I went to sleep.<\/p>\n

The next morning we got up hungry and went to look for her dad to ask if he would take us somewhere to eat. We found him in the driveway. When we walked around to car to him, he had a gas can in his hand and was pouring gas into the car.<\/p>\n

As soon as he noticed us, he said, “I tried to go to the store and the car would not start, I think it may be out of gas. Go get dressed and we will go eat breakfast somewhere.”<\/p>\n

Tara and I looked at each other trying to keep from smiling by pressing our lips tight! We literally ran inside and collapsed onto her bed cracking up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

**All of my stories are based on true events** I was a child of the eighties and wiser than most. My best friend Tara and I were 3 months apart. I joke to this day that I’ve known her since … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lesson-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/how-to-write-a-memoir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/how-to-write-a-memoir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/how-to-write-a-memoir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/how-to-write-a-memoir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/how-to-write-a-memoir.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/how-to-write-a-memoir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165,"href":"https:\/\/how-to-write-a-memoir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions\/165"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/how-to-write-a-memoir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/how-to-write-a-memoir.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/how-to-write-a-memoir.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/how-to-write-a-memoir.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}