Real Women Change Shocks

It was the beginning of another hot, windy, dry day on the farm. I looked at my watch. Barely 9am, though we had already been working for a while now; if you can call laying in the fields working. My two sisters and I decided to go sit in the truck for a while. We noticed my brother had left the keys in the ignition. I tried to convince my older sister to drive, but she was smarter than me, and refused.

It was the summer of my 14th birthday. I quickly got behind the wheel and after a few attempts (it was a standrad), the truck was moving. As I looked in the rear-view mirror, I saw my brother yelling and running towards us. I found the gas pedal quickly. And so we were off.

My sisters and I were crammed like sardines into the little white pick-up; flying over the bumps on the dirt/rock roads of the farm. The fields stretched on for miles. And so we rode on for a few more minutes.

As I drove the truck up the pivot road I saw my brother coming towards us. I slammed on the brakes just before hitting the white cement at the base of the pivot. As soon as the engine was turned off, we flung open the doors, and ran as fast as we could for the potato field. Once we were a little distance off, we quickly layed down in between the rows and rows of potatoes in hopes my brother couldn't find/see us.

No sooner had we layed down than we found we were being attacked by dirt clods. Huge, sometimes rocky, always hard, dirt clods. One after another. Landing within feet of where we were laying. In the distance we could hear my brother yelling about our stupidity for taking the truck and how we were going to get it when dad found out. And then, finally, there was silence. The bombing of dirt clods had ceased....

My dad did find out. He said that I went so fast and hard over so many bumps on the dirt road that I ruined the shocks.

My consequence: to change the shocks in the truck.