Essays That Worked!

Ross Peterson '13
Marblehead High School, Salem, MA

The Lord of the Van

It was a dark and stormy afternoon with a howling wind and rain that stung like lemon juice in a paper cut. A beast roared, spat and clicked beneath the hood of our yellow 2003 Ford Ecoline Van (School Bus Edition). Things were turning from bad to worse, but the engine was not turning at all. We were stranded.

Goddard State Park, East Greenwich, Rhode Island: not a happy place for a man, or a cross country team. We came, we ran, we conquered…and stayed. Our van would not start. As minutes turned into more minutes it was clear that our situation was not improving. What was worse, Car Talk could not be reached. We emerged from the safety of the fogged-up van and immediately split into two groups to find aid. One was a hunting party focused on finding sustenance; mine was in search of a jump, or a ride home. No one would help. We attempted to flag down a herd of yellow, steel behemoths as they sped past us, but our efforts were in vain. Their desire for freedom far outweighed their desire to help ten poor, desperate souls.

The hunting party was no more successful. From a distance we could see them throwing a plastic disc amongst themselves; a sure sign they had failed in their quest. Realizing the gravity of our situation and the futility of our efforts to save ourselves, I reflected on my life, and the last thing I had eaten. I remembered my last Oatmeal Raisin Quaker Oats granola bar had been an hour before, along with my last sip of Glacier Freeze Gatorade. My body was barely getting by, and the Quaker Oats man on the granola bar wrapper was glaring at me with those pacifist eyes. Knowing the low probability of my survival, I started thinking of the things I may never get to do. Would I ever break seventeen minutes in the 5K? Would I ever be able to finish my quest to find the food pyramid? Would I ever know where Waldo really is? Would I ever be able to invest in sub-prime loans?

Each member of the Marblehead High School boys cross country team experienced a pre-midlife crisis during those hours together. As we were all deciding who to eat first, a voice was heard coming through the speaker of an AT&T cell phone struggling to raise the bar. The deep, comforting voice of a sage fifty-something male was saying, “It seems clear to me that the car is stuck in gear and the solenoid isn’t able to connect with the hipbone of the Richter scale so what I would do is put the thing in neutral and then try to start it.” Coach put his foot on the break and yanked the shifter into neutral. The van was excruciatingly quiet while we waited for him to try starting it. “Here goes nothing.” He turned the key. Click, click, brrrrroooommmmm. YES! FINALLY!

You could taste the excitement in the van. For all we knew, rainbows were coming out of the exhaust pipe. We were going to survive after all, and Saturday night was not ruined. We pulled out of the parking lot, only a few hours behind schedule, and haded home. I turned on my iPod and fell asleep to the sounds of Guster…until I heard “oh man, what’s that smell?” We still had a two-hour drive home with ten teenage boys.

Last Modified: Monday, July 27, 2009 13:38