Smoke Tires Not Drugs

On March 21, 2024, my principal banned my parking privileges at school. In my years of driving to school, I have had a frequent run-in with my principal when it comes to doing donuts in the parking lot. My friends and I have a habit of “whipping” our trucks in any parking lot or roadway we see. More often than not it gets us in trouble quite a bit, with parents, law enforcement, and principals, we all think it’s funny and cool but others find it obnoxious and reckless, we all tend to laugh about it, even with the people yelling at us, after all, we are just kids trying to have fun. The other day I drove to school like any other day and parked my truck. It had snowed a little the evening prior making the parking lot slippery. Normally, I’d be tempted to do donuts, but I was in my dad’s truck that morning so I opted not to. But of course, my buddies decided to do some remodeling in the school parking lot.

On this fateful day, I was pulled aside and brought into the main office to talk with the principal about doing donuts in the school parking lot. He said to me ” You’ve been given too many chances, I need to suspend your parking privileges for a week”. This news broke my heart but deep down I knew it was not me, so why was I being blamed? I went through the rest of the day hurt by the fact I could not drive my truck. Fast forward to the next day, I left my house as normal without my parents suspecting anything and met my friend at the fire department, and he gave me a ride to school. It was hard to pull this off, considering the fact that my mom tracked my location so when I was asked “Why did you go to the station this morning”, I had to respond quickly and precisely, to which I said “I had to help cleanup for an event happening later that day. I went through the school day as if it were a normal day, I joked with my buddies about not being able to drive to school. I spoke with the principal halfway through the day after one of my teachers had put in a good word for me. After he and I talked he reinstated my privileges because I was honest with him.

The reason this is a story about laughter is because, in the end, it was my friends who were responsible for the donuts in the parking lot. After all the trouble I went through with my principal and trying to clear my name, in the end, it was my friend at fault. Surely enough I didn’t snitch but I told them the story and we all chuckled. To some, this story may not seem to be about laughter, but in the eyes of my principal, and mine, this was a good chuckle to look back on. Over the weeks following my principal and I have shared a laugh or two at this story. At first, I was nervous, despite being 18 and my parents not having much of a say, they would still have been mad at me for this. So when I resolved the problem by reasoning with my principal, I told my parents and we all laughed about it.

“Hersberger-Burnout-070519_Donut_0094” by Lori Hersberger is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.