I was only five when the wreck happened, well almost happened. It had been a long day hanging out at the church garage sale with my parents and believe it or not, I was getting very bored. As I was wandering around aimlessly I found my three-year-old brother, Grant, running around in his little cowboy boots that he always wore and holding a stick as if it were a gun. I thought to myself “surely that’s better than what I’m doing” and joined him. We both wandered the church’s campus playing cowboys but then boredom struck… again. Geesh, now what.

We sat under a tree for awhile trying to think of something else we could possibly do and keep ourselves busy for who knows how long we would have to be here.

“What if we play hide and seek?” Grant suggests.
I really wanted to say “With two people. Yeah great idea nimrod,”  but figured that he would tell mom so instead I said, “Nahh. that’s not as fun with only two people.”

Finally it hits us, we can play astronauts and use dads truck as a spaceship. We both agree it is a great idea, I mean why wouldn’t it.

“To the spaceship!” Grant yells much louder than needed. So we sprint towards the truck. I pull on the handle to open the rusted blue door to the cab of the chevy that we have had forever. I climb up the gray velvet seats with sleek blue stripes down the middle that had been worn down from the amount of times my parents had climbed into the truck for family trips or even the simple grocery store runs.

Grant climbs in the pilot's seat. I figured I’d let him handle all the controls and the steering wheel so that if something went wrong, it would be his fault. We sat there for awhile pressing all the buttons on the radio pretending we were astronauts in a spaceship and we were in the cockpit, and if there was one thing I learned from watching dad drive this truck it was to never mess with the stick with the ball on top of it. Then we thought of something that we could do as we watched a car drive by. As I watch a car drive by I thought that they could be enemy spaceships. I’m a genius. So now we are the good guys and we have to hide from the bad guys.

“Here comes the first one.” I hear from Grant as he is striking buttons on the radio as if we were trying to put up our shields, and then we duck. I grab onto the back of the seat as he grabs where the door and the window meet and we peak at the same time, but only showing our eyes. The car, a.k.a enemy spacecraft, passes by and we both knew that this one did not see us for sure and now we have to prepare for the next one to come. So Grant types in the code for the hyperspace and has it at  the ready for whenever needed and I punch the codes for the backup shield generator and blasters. Then I make sure that the first shield was still good. Perfect, now we are ready for anything.

It took longer than we thought, but here comes the next one. This one came from the right. “Three. Two. One. Duck!” and we both drop immediately but instead of coming back up cautiously like last time, we jump right back up. I barely get a glimpse of the next enemy. We had no time.

Grant had his back turned to the street so I threw my body towards him, tackling him down so that the enemy spaceship wouldn’t see us. Thankfully he didn’t hit his head on the door so I didn’t have to convince him to not tell mom or explain to her what had happened. That seemed to happen more than I had hoped for.

“Here comes another one!” he squeaks. We both duck and the enemy passes by. That’s when I look up and notice the stick with the little ball on top wiggling and his foot right next to it.

“Grant you idiot. You’re not suppose to hit that.” So being my five year old self, I try to fix what little brother messes up right? So I grab the ball and I wiggle it a little bit and it jerks into position.

There. It’s fixed.

Wrong.

The parking lot where the truck was parked was on a slant and my dad had parked about halfway up. We both start freaking out. We lock eyes and immediately started blaming each other as the old blue truck started to slowly roll down the parking lot towards the street. All of a sudden we were not playing spaceships anymore, this was actually happening. It was like everything began moving in slow motion.

We were gaining speed. What do we do? I look up out of the window and my dad has his back turned to the street and I can see one of my parents friends notice us through the door and start yelling and pointing right at us. My dad then turns around I was able to read his lips perfectly.  “Oh, s***!”

We are halfway to the street now and my dad is sprinting towards the truck. Grant and I are still freaking out, yet frozen in pure terror. We hit the road and the truck bounces as it rolls from the inclined parking lot to the flat pavement causing Grant and I to be thrown around in the cab. Dad is now running alongside the truck.
“Hit the breaks!” he yells at us like we knew how to control it. To us, this was only our imaginary spaceship.
“Grant! Whatever you do, don’t go into hyperspace!” I scream.

Dad grabs the handle and yanks the rusted door open and by now we were on the opposite side of the road. I am still in the passenger seat and Grant is in the middle now. Dad jumps into the truck as it is are still rolling. He turns the wheel to the right so we wouldn’t hit the church and slams on the wide black lever for hyperspace. Oh no.

“Dad don’t hit that! That’s for hyperspace!” Grant and I both yell towards him.
The truck comes to a stop. We look at each other in awe.
“How did he do that?” Grant whispers towards me.

“I have no idea.” I respond as I look up and another car had already turned onto the same road. Dad turns on the truck and pulls it into the half gravel, half paved parking lot on the side of the church.

As soon as he comes to a stop and turns the truck off, I opened the door and bolted towards the door of the church because I knew that I was going to get a not so nice yelling at. When I got inside I made sure to get into the hardest, most uncomfortable place I could find. I hide in the room where they store the chairs and I am waiting there hoping no one finds me. About thirty minutes go by before I could finally get myself to emerge from my secret hide out. Luckily the first person I see was not my father but one of mom’s friends. I follow her out the front door where I see Grant eating a popsicle acting like we didn’t almost just crash the truck into the side of the church. I was then given my popsicle but kept a wary eye out for my dad. Sadly I just knew that I was going to get yelled at sooner or later so I just accepted it. So I try to enjoy my popsicle like Grant was.
I lean my head back and drink the juice leftover from my popsicle. Finally. This is my favorite part, but from the corner of my eye I see a mammoth of a shadow hastily approaching me.

Oh great, here he comes.