The Time I Drove a Motorcycle Through a House

When I was eighteen years old, I drove a motorcycle through the wall of our house. I wasn’t actually riding the motorcycle, and it wasn’t even running. How might one drive a parked motorcycle through a wall?

I was home from college for the summer, and I went out to the garage to get in my car and drive to my summer job at the bookstore. It was a hand-me-down, 1987 Nissan Stanza, standard transmission. I opened the car door, plopped my butt in the seat with my legs still hanging out the open door, and turned the key to start the car. It roared to life and lurched forward as I panicked, scrambling to get my feet in the car and on the brake to halt the car’s forward progress. Which I did. But not before the car pushed my dad’s motorcycle, parked in front of it, through the wall and into the brand-spanking new den my dad had just finished building.

If you know anything about cars and stick shifts, you probably think I’m making this up. You are thinking, But standard transmissions don’t start unless you have your foot on the clutch.

Yes, but not this one. That car began having trouble starting back when it was still my dad’s. Eighty-five percent of the time when my dad fixes something, it involves removing safety features. Like the one that prevents a car from starting unless your foot is on the clutch. I always left the car in neutral with the parking brake on, which allowed me to develop the (bad) habit of starting it without being all the way inside it yet. My dad, however, liked to leave it in gear with the parking brake off, and I’d forgotten he’d moved it for me the night before.

So there I am. I have to be at work in fifteen minutes, and I am staring in horror at the motorcycle handlebars poking through that brand new wall. In the span of five seconds, I have scratched the front of my car, damaged my dad’s motorcycle and demolished a recently-completed construction project. My sister has traveled halfway downstairs (not all the way; she’s 15 and only one notch above bored by the whole sitch) and is gawking from the stairwell like, What’d you do?!

Did I call my dad at work? No. I called my mom. I pleaded with her to call him, so I wouldn’t have to face the music. She flat-out refused, saying something to the effect of, “No way. You made your bed, now you lie in it.”

So I took a deep breath and called my dad but not before I came up with a strategy:

Dad: This is Pat.

Me: Dad, it’s April. I just pushed your motorcycle through the wall with my car, but it’s all your fault because YOU LEFT MY CAR IN GEAR, AND I NEVER WOULD HAVE DONE IT IF IT WEREN’T FOR YOU!

‘Like how I didn’t give him a chance to respond? Like how I immediately went on the offensive and wholly denied any personal responsibility. Guess what? It worked. Just not how I intended.

My dad laughed his ass off at me through the phone. At first, I was scared he had lost it entirely, but then I realized he actually thought it was funny. My blaming it on him was so ridiculous, he wasn’t even mad. (Plus, by the time I was 18, he was starting to mellow a bit.)

He had me help him fix the wall, which was a logical consequence and was actually kind of fun — a bonding experience. It all turned out okay, and I never again started that car or any other manual transmission without both the clutch and the brake covered. I also learned…

• When you fuck up really badly, if you can make your confession ridiculous to the point of hilarity, maybe they’ll go easy on you.
• It is good to laugh at yourself.
• It’s bad to park things in front of other things.
• Under no circumstances should you remove safety mechanisms from devices used by people under the age of thirty.