Dummy in the Road.

When I was in high school, the family car was a 1974 Dodge Van.  For various reasons, I would often be stuck, or allowed to, drive the van instead of my Colt.  Which made it a lot of fun to cruise around with 20 of my best and closest friends.  (And at 73 cents a gallon, I needed that many people to pay for the gas.)

The Harvard/Yale area around 17th East was solid middle class at the time, so a good portion of my friends lived in the area, which meant I spent a lot of time driving around there.  One of these times we were headed up 17th East, just north of the now defunct Emigration Market, when I had to bring the van to a screeching halt, within feet of hitting a body in the middle of the road. 

Once my heart was back out of my throat, I noticed it was not a body, but instead a home made dummy.  So, I pulled up next to it, my friends slid open the side door, hauled it into the van and we took off as a group of kids came screaming out of the bushes after us.  My theory was “the spoils go to he who peed his pants”, which meant the dummy was mine. 

Now, they shouldn’t have used a new pair of Adidas, nice pair of corduroys and shirt and stuffed it with mom’s good towels if they were going to put it in the middle of the street.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Life lesson A-567.4-B7BstrokeR:

Don’t use mom’s good towels and your good shoes for a practical joke that may blow up in your face.