As the car pulled into my grandparents' driveway, my best friend and I piled out.
We had just gotten back from a far away football game: the regional playoffs. It was senior year, and we were both in the band. Since my grandparents were at the game, we decided to ride back with them and get something to eat on the way home.
However, the game had gone horribly awry and our old team came away empty handed. The car ride back to Topeka was much more quiet than normal, with the occasional spurts of fury "What the heck happened?" or "They just didn't have it tonight." My grandfather, a kind old 71-year-old who seems almost loopy at times, had driven us up to the game.
As we were driving on the highway, the car began to slow down and was barely going. We didn't know what was wrong with it, so we decided to drop it off and pick up another car for the drive home. My grandpa, who hauls dirt and plows snow for a living, had a veritable junkyard behind his house that was filled with a museum's worth of ancient, jeep-shaped vehicles called Scouts.
We dropped my Grandma off and piled into the oldest, rustiest, most jankity looking hunk of junk in the yard. My buddy Brendan, looking apprehensively at the decrepit vessel, climbed nervously into the backseat.
"Don't worry," I said. "It should stay together."
He gave a nervous chuckle, and my grandpa pulled out his wallet. Pulling out one of the thousands of credit cards his spouse had gathered over the years, he announced that our first pit stop would be at Dillons to gas up the beast. As he struggled to ignite the dusty old engine into life, smoke rose vividly in the chilly air. Finally getting the motor turned over, he pulled out of the driveway and headed toward the grocery store.
When we arrived, there wasn't a car in sight. The store closed at 9 o'clock back in those days, and there was no Wal-Mart across the street. It was empty. As he gased up the car, we noticed he turned the other way and a strange noise was coming from outside. At first, I thought that the gas was leaking out of the crappy yellow Scout. However, my friend was the first to realize what was going on.
"Is he...peeing?"
I turned around in astonishment, only to realize that my grandpa was taking a leak in the Dillon's parking lot. I felt an odd emotion right then, a mixture of embarassment, confusion, worry and almost peeing myself from laughter. As the got back in the car, I smiled broadly at my grandfather.
"You know there's cameras out here, don't you?" I asked him.
"Oh, it's too cold for them to see anything," he responded matter-of-factly.
Laughing all the way back to the highschool, we realized we were the last people to leave. We continued talking in the parking lot as my grandpa drove off. Moments later, a police car went whizzing by with his lights on and sirens blaring.
Instinctively, I said out loud, "Probably going after Grandpa."
We got in my truck and headed out the same entrance he had left from. Moments later, I realized my fears were correct. Standing outside the yellow Scout, my grandpa was having a heated conversation with the police officer, gesturing with his arms and trying to talk his way out of the ticket.
Giggling madly, I called my grandma on my cellphone.
"Grandma," I said. "Hope you got enough money to bail grandpa out of jail..."
