"Memories" by Sean M.

This is an autobiographical account.

The night of the Homecoming game, my friends and I decided to venture on a hike after the game. We called these hikes "night hikes" (I know, sounds basic, but what else are we supposed to call it). As we were readying to depart, I remembered that I had a flashlight in my back seat, so I ran back to get it. As I shut the door, I noticed that my pockets were a little lighter than when I had come back. The time it took the door to shut seemed like the longest 2 seconds of my life. Yet, as long as those two seconds seemed, I could not react fast enough to hurry up and stop the door from closing. And there sat my keys on the seat, inside my locked car.

All my friends laughed at me as I was forced to get a ride home from them. I didn't laugh; I was too salty to laugh.

As we reached my house, I remembered that I had been responsible enough to lock all doors and shut all the windows. And my house key was also locked within my car. We went around and looked for any unlocked windows. Luckily, I had accidentally left one unlocked. There was one problem however, I hand no way of getting to it. Then, the brilliant idea occurred to me: why don't we just stack the trash cans that are on the side of my house, then I'll be able to climb up.

After we stacked them, I began the ascent, and about halfway up I noticed that the makeshift ladder was not as sturdy as I previously thought. It began to wiggle and that's when my friend asked if I would like to get down. I replied slowly and stupidly, "Yeahhh," for fear that if I spoke too fast I might lose what little balance I had. Just as I was shifting my weight down, the trash cans gave and I fell. One ended up hitting me on the head, but that was the least of my worries. Mind you, that it was around twelve at night when the booming crash happened; I don't know why my neighbors didn't call the cops, suspecting we were burglars.

Anyways, I wizened up and went next door to ask my neighbor for his ladder. He graciously gave me an eight-foot ladder, but it was about twelve feet to the window. So I used my "redneck ingenuity" and stacked the ladder on the trash can because it gave me the unaccounted for extra feet. I ascended one more time, slipped off the screen, and cautiously crawled through the window victoriously.

There are a couple things I learned from this experience. First of all, don't be stupid and lock your keys in your car. Secondly, it is memories like these that will last forever, and one day you'll be able to look back on when you're forty and laugh. So my advice is to go out and do stupid things with your friends while you still can (just make sure it's legal, I've been down that road and it's not fun) because next year when you're all at different colleges you guys won't be able to do all the things you can do now.

"Stay foolish" - Steve Jobs