When I was a kid I saw a light flying high above the trees one night, thought it was an alien, turned out to be just God.

When I was sixteen years old I did a lot of stupid things. The kind of things that you read about on the Darwin Awards site. A friend of mine reminded me of one of those stories today, so I thought I'd share it here.

I grew up in a small town in rural Utah. Needless to say, there wasn't a whole lot to do for entertainment. Many nights consisted of dragging Main Street, and that was it. Sure, driving up and down a single street in the hopes of running into friends so you could talk to them in a parking lot is a pointless exercise, but it beat sitting around the house, so that's what we did.

One of the other problems with living in a small town (and part of why dragging Main was the thing to do) is that everything closes by six o'clock p.m. If we got in the mood for snacks, we'd have to drive to purchase them at the "busy" gas stations along the freeway exits. One evening, we got in such a mood, so a carload of us went to the north end of town to buy some sodas and candy bars. It just so happened that I was the last one to pay, so my friends did what any normal sixteen year olds would do in an attempt to be funny: They ran out to the car, got in, and tried to leave me there.

I finished paying, then ran out just in time to be able to jump up on their back bumper and grab onto the car, thus insuring that I would not be left behind. Of course, I was under the mistaken impression that they would stop the car and let me in once they realized I had caught them. Instead, they decided it would be funny to go the other way, and they took the dirt road that led to the city dump. By this time, the car was moving too fast for me to be able to jump off without receiving any bodily harm. Everyone knows how afraid I am of receiving bodily harm, so there I was, stuck standing on the rear bumper of a car traveling ~50 mph down a dirt road, unable to do anything about it.

About this time I looked ahead and saw that one of the Sherriff's deputies was parked ahead, so I did what I thought best given the circumstances. I squatted down on the bumper, foolishly hoping that somehow he wouldn't notice me there as we went speeding by.

He noticed.

Fortunately, I was able to get down off the bumper safely once the officer pulled us over. Unfortunately, we had some explaining to do.

Officer: Alright boys, where's the party at?

Us: What party?

Officer: I'm not stupid you know. You guys are about the fifth car I've seen heading out this way, now where's the party?

Us: Honestly, we don't know anything about a party. We were just fooling around and came out this way.

Officer: So you guys aren't on your way to get drunk?

Us: No. None of us even drink.

[He then checked our IDs and eyed us all suspiciously for a spell]

Officer: Ok, I believe you. I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna treat this like a UFO. I saw somethin', and I don't know what it was, but if I see it again I'll know.

Then he let us go. No tickets. No calls to our parents. He just sent us on our way (making sure we were all inside the vehicle this time) then got back to trying to catch underage drinkers.

I just love that line he gave about the UFO. I'm willing to bet that he practiced it at home, and probably even bragged about it later back at the Sherriff's Office. Either that, or it's the line he gives everyone when he lets them off the hook for something. At any rate, it's a classic.