A Little Bit Like Home

Fifteen Minutes to Move the Car

I am not proud of every stunt I pulled in college. But when a group of us gets together, many of those stories comes up, and soon we are laughing at something that should have gotten us in more trouble than it did.

There were several incidents. A turn signal wired to their car’s horn. A room filled knee-deep with wadded-up newspapers, a favor later returned when my car was not merely filled with those same recycled wads but stuffed full of them. Names will be withheld here, partly as an act of mercy and mostly because I am grateful these people still speak to me.

The stunt I remember most involved a younger friend’s Pontiac Grand Am, metallic gray, with that unmistakable late 1980s look. Some people have a family heirloom or a treasured childhood keepsake. He had the Grand Am. He was nice, extremely intelligent and reacted to teasing in a way that encouraged more poor decisions. He would smile, offer a shallow threat about paying us back someday and give us the “oh, you guys” look.

An earlier prank involving the car had been simple. We distributed homemade “For Sale” posters with a photo of his Grand Am, an attractive price and his phone number on the tear-away pieces. That should have been enough. It was not.

The next plan required more effort and more common sense than I possessed. The idea was to move the Grand Am to the lawn beside the Physics Building across the street from the house on College Avenue. Because the car needed to appear there without its owner’s knowledge, the plan required me to quietly acquire his keys, move the car, return the keys and act innocent. That sentence explains why 20-year-old judgment should not be trusted without adult supervision.

Somehow, it worked. I got the keys, moved the car, placed “For Sale” signs in the windows, returned the keys and settled onto a couch where I could watch people react as they walked by. I had arranged for a few friends to start calling him around 7:30 that morning to ask about the car for sale, since the first call would also be his wake-up call.

It was a beautiful plan, which is another way of saying it had not yet encountered reality. A University Police car drove down College Avenue, parked near the Grand Am and the officer began jotting down the license plate number. At that point, the prank became less funny. I ran across the street and greeted the officer with what I hoped was an appropriate blend of respect and panic. I explained it was a practical joke. He did not seem moved by the creative genius. He told me if the car was not gone in 15 minutes, he was calling a tow truck.

That focused my morning considerably.

I called the owner and told him his car was parked on the grass in front of the Physics Building. He did not believe me, which was understandable. So I knocked on his door and told him I needed his keys. Still waking up, he decided he had to see this for himself. When he looked out the window, his eyes got considerably larger. There sat his beloved Grand Am, wearing “For Sale” signs like a car that had made several bad choices overnight. The flashing lights from the police car helped clarify the urgency.

He hurried down, got his keys and went across the street. Then, instead of backing up and retracing the short path between the buildings, he drove the Grand Am down the sidewalk to the end of the block before pulling onto the street. For those watching, that was the final gift of the morning: a metallic gray Pontiac rolling down a campus sidewalk as if it belonged there.

Age changes how a person sees these things. At the time, I thought mostly about the laugh. Later, I thought about the inconvenience, the embarrassment and the fact that other people were more gracious to me than I deserved. I have apologized more than once for that stunt and others like it. I am still grateful he ever spoke to me again.

Tom Brand is a St. Joseph, Missouri, writer whose latest book, “You Have To Leave If You Want To Come Back,” is available at RichardsonPress.com. He remains thankful for friends, forgiveness, and cars that were allowed to move before they were towed.