Two friends are driving in New Hampshire. Let’s call them Driver and Passenger. Driver is taking them to Passenger’s family lake house. At night. And yes, they have been drinking. (We don’t do that anymore. Remember to learn from Sid’s my friends’ mistakes.)
Passenger is not paying much attention to the driving, until Driver says, “Look at the size of this puddle up ahead!”
And they promptly drive down a boat ramp at 40 mph directly into Lake Winnipesaukee, the largest lake in New Hampshire. A state that has an entire Lakes Region.
They are half-submerged, with beer cans floating out of the doors, as a neighbor lady comes out of her house and asks, “Is everything OK? Maybe I should call the police.”
“No problem, ma’am. My friend’s just a little stuck. I’m going to get my truck and pull him out.”
Passenger runs down the road to get his truck. Which, by the way, is the family dump-truck, since his dad was that kind of guy and did a lot of his own work on the house.
He comes back around the bend to the boat ramp, where the police have indeed arrived and are actually being pretty lenient with Driver, this being the country and knowing he just needs to get pulled out and then down a dirt road.
The police ask Driver, “Is that your friend coming?”
“That’s him.” How many dump trucks were they expecting at the boat ramp that night, anyway?
But Passenger sees the police, freaks out, pulls a U-turn and races back down the dirt road, thinking if he just gets back on the family property, he’s all set. He gets himself stuck on a tree stump and is frantically revving it back and forth to get free, when one of the officers gently raps on his window.
“Aren’t you supposed to be helping you buddy get out of the lake down there?”
He answers, with a huge chain with a hook on it next to him on the seat, “Honestly, officer, I don’t know what you’re referring to.”
Somehow, the police let them both get home without arrest.
Photo via Carl Wycoff / Flickr