It was 11:16 PM. I was going to bed when I heard a loud crash outside. I looked through my window and saw nothing. Intuitively, it was night, so everything was hard to see. When I looked closer, I thought I saw rubble where my car had once been. I wiped my eyes clean, thinking there was no way; I looked again. I was just tired. Right? If only.

I got my first car a month before my behind-the-wheel test so I could practice on it. But I never really got to drive it. I drove it twice before this night; probably only equating to half an hour of driving. I remember running outside just behind my parents. I remember seeing the neighbors that were already there. I remember laughing a little bit. I guess this was real.

We found the crumbled remains of my tiny, ten-year-old, Lexus hybrid hatchback all over the road and the sidewalk. It had been smushed almost as if its true purpose was to be an accordion. To make matters worse, when my car had been hit, my car was pushed into my mom's car. Which didn’t wreck it, but its bumper needed to be reattached to the frame. Although a plus side to all this was that the Accord was a lot cooler because once we got it fixed, the car horn sounded like a clown horn.

Our neighbors started describing what they had seen to us: “They were drunk, they swerved all around the road as they drove down it.” Which was corroborated by the streaks of oil that he left on the street and the sidewalk. “Then they just drove off.” This was about the time that my dad took off down the street and followed the streak of oil.

In all the chaos, someone had called the cops to report the crime. And they showed up. They started asking questions about what we had seen. Nothing. What our neighbors had seen. A swerving car coming down the street. And who owned the car? My parents. By the time they had collected this information, my dad had come running back to our street, yelling that he had found the car. The cops followed reluctantly. Saying phrases similar to, “Yeah right⸮”

My dad and I walked to a tented car, not more than two blocks away. Down a street connected to ours. The cops drove just behind us. When the cops picked up the car's tarp you could see that the front bumper was missing. But what made it even more convincing was the smoke that flew from the engine and the oils left all over the sidewalks leading up to it, stopping at this car.

It suddenly became clear why my car had accordian-ed into its current form. This was a Lincoln Continental which we suspected to be from the 90s, meaning that the aluminum carcass of my car was no match for this giant steel machine. Suddenly the cops were more impressed with my dad’s detective skills.

Did you know that in California, once you step into your house, cops cannot arrest you for a DUI; you’ll see why this is important in a minute. When the cops knocked on the door, a middle-aged man stepped out, and when the cops started asking questions, his tired voice was overpowered by the confused look on his face. He held a reasonable conversation and explained that the Lincoln Continental was his son’s car. He stepped back inside and attempted to get his son out of his locked bedroom. When he finally woke his son up, together, they stepped outside. All the 27-year-old kid could say was that he wanted his lawyer, his words slurred, and he had to repeat himself three times to get the message across. He was so tipsy that we began to become concerned he might fall down the stairs.

The next morning we began the physical cleanup process. We searched through the process to see if there was anything in the rubble worth keeping. Our favorite memento was the bumper of a Lincoln Continental with the license plate still attached. Talk about a clean getaway.