Part 1: A teenage lesson

I was never the cool kid in school. In the 8th grade I had quite a few cool friends only because I knew them from when I was little. The summer before high school things changed dramatically. My friend, Dave, and I were having fun getting into random trouble and we thought it would be a rush to steal a dirt bike from a nearby farm. When your 14, a lot of ideas seem good. We had seen a guy driving around on this yellow Yamaha earlier that day and later saw his family drive away from the farm for some shopping in town we had guessed. Even though it was raining, we snuck over to the farm through some farmer's fields and into the shed where we saw the yellow bike through a partially opened door. With one kick I started the bike and took off with Dave on the back. We hid it in a forest near my dads farm only a 20 Minuit ride away. Pretty impressed with ourselves, we called up our friend and told him what we had done. He said we were stupid and would get caught. We didn't think much of what he had said but when we saw a police car drive up and down the road we certainly got nervous. Dave and I walked back into the forest to move the bike to a more safe location but when crossing the road the police saw us with the bike and arrested the two of us on the spot for theft under $5000. We spend the night in the local jail before my parents came to pick us up in the morning. We were sentenced to a court date where we received 100 hours of community service and 6 months of probation each. I served my time in the local library organizing books etc. I was grounded for 3 months by my parents but Dave's parents did not punish him at all.

During the first week of high school our stunt was the talk of the town. I'm not sure how, but nobody knew I was the one who had taken the dirt bike. Dave was the talk of the school since he had gloated about how bad ass he was. I kept quiet for days until Dave had let it slip out that I was the leader in the crime. Very embarrassed at the time I avoided everyone and quickly became an out cast in school. It was not until the 11th grade that I was making Friends again and coming out of my shell. Finally in the 12th grade I became myself again and was often out ATVing with my friends and racing my old Chevy Beretta down the street. As high school came to a close I attempted to savor every last day as I had a feeling that was as good as life was going to get. My feeling turned out to be right.