When I was in middle school my friends and I got in trouble for everything we did. We would walk into a store and steal a whole bunch of candy and cases of soda. After we had everything in our pockets it was noticeable, so most the time we had to run away from the manager while he yelled at us. He would always call us “hoodlums,” for some reason that always made me laugh at the top of my lungs.

One time we all got bored so we decided to go the junk yard and do something dumb. We all enjoyed the speed of adrenaline it, made us feel so alive. As soon as we got there we started to break everything that was breakable in the junk yard. I would throw rocks at the windows or glass. We would role these massive five foot wheels in front of the junk yard gate to give the manager a hard time.

We got in from the back of the junk yard. The junk yard was surrounded by a seven foot fence. We eventually made a big hole through the fence with wire cutters. The manager would always fix it, but we just tore it up again.

We got bored one day so we all went to the junk yard. We walked around looking for something we could take to do something crazy with. I was the closest to the front gate and everyone else was close to the back of the junkyard. In a split second a ford grey mini truck broke through the gate. The truck broke the chain that was wrapped around both of the fence doors to keep it from opening, it was the manager.

She started yelling at as while she was roaring her engine. I turned around and everyone was running out of the hole. I looked back at the manager and she put the gear in drive so I turned around and sprinted for the hole. She was right behind me, I jumped out of the hole and I heard her slam on the breaks. The truck slid because on the inside of the junk yard was all dirt. I caught up with the other guys and we all started to laugh because we thought it was over. I turned around and saw the grey truck break through the back of the fence and was speeding towards us.

She was picking up speed so we all ran into a corn field. We waited to see if she was going to pass right by us or give up. She wasn’t stopping, she was going to head into the corn field. We all ran deeper into the corn field. The truck was right behind us, but it was going much slower because of the mud. She was running into the corn knocking them down running them over.

Everyone ran their separate ways. We all broke apart, but she was still behind me, for some reason she really hated me and wanted to run me over. I ran about two hundred yards until I finally got out of the corn field and came out where I first went in. I had run in circles. My friends were standing in front of me and started to throw rocks at the window of her truck.

The window broke and went inside of the truck. She lost control of the truck and crashed into a tree. What was surprising was that she still tried to run me over even though she couldn’t see us.

After she crashed we walked home laughing about the incident. We didn’t live too far from the junk yard or the corn field, it was all in the same area. We got bored being home so we went to go play Basketball and talk about what we did and how crazy it was.

When the sun went down we got bored and went for a walk. As I was walking I heard a loud “Bang.” I didn’t know what it was until I turned around and saw that one of my friends hit a house. Everyone started to run as fast as we could away from the house. When we started to slow down our pace and start walking again someone else would hit another house and we were all forced to start running again.

I picked up a rock that was the size of a ping pong ball and through it at the manager’s house. For a second it was dead silence then a loud clash of glass hit the floor. I wasn’t aiming to hit the window, but it did and it shattered her window.

It’s funny when we think back to all the crazy times we had together. I guess it was a phase we went through, because now we have matured out of that phase and are on our pursuit to graduate high school. If I could go back in time to change the reckless things I did, I wouldn’t because even though we never got in trouble for the things we did I learned from them.

I learned living the fast life is dangerous and puts other people’s lives through a struggle. Growing up I didn’t understand or care about that struggle until I grew up and started to feel it myself. The generations to come of kids gets worse and worse. The news reporters talk about kids shooting up schools and going on killing sprees. I also see kids being rude or careless to people who could use help. It’s sad that I had to grow up to see I was also like that.