The RIde

It was 1984. I was thirteen yrs old and my brother was turning fifteen soon. We lived in a little one story house on the northeast side of Indy. I remember it being the beginning of summer but I am not quite sure. Since there was no such thing as a cell phone any and all fun things needed to be planned ahead. This includes things normally done spontaneously. Around nine oclock on some friday in some part of the summer, five kids all between the age of thirteen and fifteen started calling each other on the phone. The plan was for Henry to pick us up sometime after 10 pm. Henry was fourteen. He was the rebel of our Korean church. The one who was willing to try anything and knew no limits. I am sure if you think about it you know someone like that. But Henry was also one of the best friends anyone can ask for. So what he planned was to steal his father's customized van for a joyride. This van was cool as it had cabinets, a couch, a table and other things we just don't see anymore. The closest thing that resembles it is an RV. So my brother and I patiently waited for a van to park outside our house. Finally around midnight, it came. Henry turned off his lights waited outside. Now the front door was too close to my parents room. The windows although in the front were too difficult to open because of the way my Dad painted them. My brother suggested we go through the garage. Our garage did not have a door that led outside. What we did was open the garage door itself but stopped it at about a foot and a half. Then we rolled outside. When we got into the van we saw all our church crew. Five of us were ready to hit the town. At least as much as a group of Korean early teens could in the mid 80's. Jamming to the radio, listening to Def Leppard or the Thomson Twins, we were off. We drove everywhere and loved every minute of it. At one point we argued which way we would go and someone yelled "turn left " to our driver. Right then he ran over a median and scared us all to death as we bounced up and down in the back of the van. When we drove a little outside of the Indy area, we hit some long country roads. Henry decided he was going to test the limits of the van. He pushed that poor van all the way to 95 miles per hour. Once again this is in the mid 80's. Cars weren't pushed like this. Henry pushed. All night long we drove around. We were free. Free from our parents telling us what to do all the time. Free from a teacher or any authority. A taste of absolute freedom. If you were waiting for a lesson in this story about how we were humbled and learned that freedom came at a price, sorry. It didn't happen. We had a blast. Henry brought us back at 4am. We rolled back under the garage door. Closed it. Tiptoed back to our room. Slept with a smile. Life went on. We all grew up and truthfully none of us really see much of each other anymore. That's life. But that night, we were free. We were together. We had fun. The excitement of not knowing what will happen can be quite the rush. Now its just quite a memory.