We were stupid kids throwing milkshakes

I didn't drink or do drugs in high school. I don't think I would have drank or done drugs had I been invited to the parties where the drinking and drugging were happening, but given that I never was invited, I'll never know.

Nope, no booze or narcotics: my vice was vandalism.

I won't go into the details because I don't know what constitutes a confession, but we were stupid, really stupid.

People drive too fast on Austin Springs Road. To use the phrase of the locals: they “haul ass”. It's a curvy road that rips in and behind Boone Lake on its way in and out of North Johnson City. It was the road I used to take my friends home when we hung out on Friday nights because I preferred to stay off the main roads.

One night, I was driving slowly on Austin Springs with some friends who I won't name, but they know who they are. We'd done our usual Friday night routine of not being invited to parties where there was booze and narcotics and had gone to Sonic to do America's favorite legal drugs: sugar and chicken strips.

I was sipping on a Route 44 slushy (blue raspberry with Nerds in it), and my accomplices, ahem, my friends, had strawberry milkshakes.

I saw one thing and heard two others: I saw the large pickup truck that screamed "owns a semi-automatic weapon" driving towards us, I heard my friend in the seat behind me roll the window down, and I heard what sounded like a milkshake splatting on a windshield because it was a milkshake splatting on a windshield.

In my rearview, I saw the truck with its wheels locked up and the reverse lights on. The driver was whipping the truck around like Jack Bauer.

"Haul ass!" my friend shouted.

I floored it right into a hairpin turn. Something Bristol Motor Speedway came alive in me. My hands gripped the wheel, and I rocketed down Austin Springs. I checked my rearview all the way into Sullivan County. Semi-Automatic never got close to us. We'd disappeared into the East Tennessee Night, laughing like morons.

When I first sat down to write this story, I wrote about some things we vandalized. But the more I wrote, the less funny it became. I started to feel that real exposure as a writer where you can never quite tell if it's something you should hold back or the stories people need to hear because they're the worst thing for my own frail ego: the truth.

I got caught vandalizing one time because we egged a car. By then, I was old enough that my mother's disappointment was the only punishment necessary. It worked. My vandalism days were over (until my kids are old enough to TP houses because that will never be funny, you’ve been warned).

It's hard not to feel guilty that I didn't get in more trouble. In some ways, we got away with most of what we did because it didn't seem as bad as drinking or drugs. Some of it was, to tell the truth. And I clearly still feel shame about it. I don't know — we were stupid kids throwing milkshakes.

One night after I got married, I drove home to our North Knoxville condo. I still like to stay off the main roads, so I was driving the back way over Sharp's Ridge on Central.

As I passed an SUV—I don't know what it was—maybe an Xterra—I saw and heard something: a milkshake splatting on my windshield.

And I laughed the whole way home.