One cold winter evening; some of my friends and I all stayed together at my friend’s house. My friends asked, “What are we going to do tonight?” 

My friend Alex suggested, “Let’s go ding dong ditching.” We drove around Ayersville and ding dong ditched people and just fooled around. 

 At about twelve or so, it was time to go back to Continental to my friend’s house. We drove around listening to music, having a good time, and we thought it was a good idea to cruise around back roads and mess around. We also went over some rough hills or bumps, and they weren’t that enormous. We finally found a hill that was huge, just like a mountain. My friends all yelled, “I bet you won’t leap over the hill in your car.” I, being the person who likes to have fun, wasn’t going to turn down a good time, I replied, “Full send or no send, I guess.” 

We went over the hill and then turned my rusty white car around and backed up a little bit, not very far because I didn’t want anything terrible to happen. I went and jumped it and nothing happened, and we, being unintelligent kids, thought, ‘oh wow, that was so fun. Let's do that again.’ This time we went over the hill and whipped around again, and when we did it this time, my friends howled, “I bet you won’t back up further.” 

We backed up even further then before thinking it was going to be a good idea, and it wasn’t. When we backed up, we had gone a ways back, and we hauled. I gripped the wheel and slammed the gas pedal to the floor which threw everybody back. We finally hit the hill and soared over it, and we were airborne. The car went from a car to a bird, and when we landed, Boom. We knocked the rusty muffler off the car. It had completely fallen off. I threw the car in park everyone scattered out. All my friends laughed when we got out and looked under the car. I did not laugh because I didn’t think it was funny. The muffler was dangling there from one brace. I suggested, “Let’s drag it and see if it stays on.” We climbed back into the car. I put the car in reverse while everybody laughed. Looking ahead, I slowly hit the gas. We tried dragging the muffler but when we drug it, it fell off. I exclaimed, “This is bad.” 

We had to throw the warm muffler in the trunk and had to reverse all the way to my friend’s house. When we finally got back, we put my broken car in his barn and tried to fix it even though there wasn’t anything to fix it. We just lay there and started to mess around and thought it was funny. Isaac suggested, “Let’s try zip ties.” He went and found some, and I pulled myself under the car to try to zip tie the muffler, but that wasn’t going to work because it was so gnarled. My friends continued to laugh. 

Eventually, we just dredged inside and communicated about how much trouble I was going to be in, and I thought, ‘I knew I shouldn’t have done it. I knew it.’

We finally drifted to bed, and when we woke up, we had to go to my house with the muffler in my friend’s car. When we finally arrived home, my dad was mad. He even said it sounded like a race was going on outside. Then after coming home from a work break, my mom  she was even more enraged, and she yelled, “What were you thinking?” 

I said, “I wasn’t.”

It just wasn’t a good situation. Her face was so red I could’ve cook an egg on it. It also took three weeks after it happened to get my car fixed, and I was grounded for a while after. That’s why no one should launch a car.