Millennium Falcon

One night I was driving our family’s 1988 Honda Civic Wagon, which at that moment was packed to the gills with people. There were a bunch of my friends as well as my brother and his friend. My brother was in the very back where there was no seat. A truck pulled up very close behind us and the next thing I knew was that they were opening their doors and getting out to head for us. As the car in front of me drove away I quickly pulled ahead. The people from the truck got back into the truck and followed us onto a larger busy street. I made a quick left turn, in front of a group of oncoming cars, off of the busy street onto a side street. (Yes we could have gotten out and beat the people up, but I have always enjoyed a good car chase.)The oncoming cars gave us a chance to put some distance between us and the truck. I made another quick right turn down a residential street and when we got near a place to turn off of that street, we saw the truck come onto the other end of the street. I turned left off of that street and then immediately left again down the alley for that street. I got about 40 yards down the alley, took my foot off the brake after stopping and turned off the lights. As we watched to see if the truck would turn behind us I said, “I feel like Han Solo hiding in the cave that was actually a giant worm.” We saw the truck drive by the end of the alley and all felt relieved. Someone said that my brother had flipped off the people in the truck from the very back of the car.

Just after this was proposed as the reason for the chase one of my friends yelled out, “They’re coming down the alley!!!” I took off as fast as a fully weighed down Honda Civic wagon could. About half way down the alley there was what appeared to be a turn for an intersecting alley. I took the right turn and was surprised to find us traveling through a city park. There was a house near the edge of the park and I headed straight for it in hopes that I could use the driveway. But the park was on the opposite side of the house from the driveway. The front yard for this home consisted of some diamond shaped openings for trees cut out of cobblestone. I ran over two of these diamonds and then headed for the curb. It seemed like the highest curb that had ever been crafted. As the Honda flew off of it I got a very sick feeling in my stomach as did everyone else in the car did I am sure. While in flight I thought of the scene in Ferris Bueller’s day off when the car attendants caught air in Cameron’s Father’s car with the Star Wars soundtrack playing over it. We hit the street with a loud crash and scrape followed by the sound of a muffler dragging on the ground.

We drove down the street a little and pulled over to inspect the damage. There really wasn’t any new damage. The muffler had never been properly attached as long as I had driven the car but rather, was held up from the ground by a rubber strap. I reattached the strap and we headed out. From then on, we called that car the Millennium Falcon and I would make Chewbacca noises randomly while driving.