When I was the twelve year old grom on the surf runs across state, the older guys would get in the back and go to sleep for the midnight run and tell me to drive. The steering wheel was wider than my shoulders and sitting in the old dilapidated seat the wheel was over my head. I looked through the spokes just able to squint over the dash to see the road. I was given the wheel after we exited the interstate onto the shortcut. All the Florida back roads were two lane.  

 There was this particular road through the wilderness, it cut across the cow country of Florida to Cocoa Beach. It is called Nova road. We called it the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This was pre Disney and Kissimmee Florida was a one ice cream stand town. You had to ease through Kissimmee until you got to the Ho Chi Minh. I was stuck behind some road barge with a driver that had no intention of increasing speed after leaving the confines of Kissimmee proper. As fate would have it they slowed to turn on the Ho. By this time I had it. I gunned it around the car at the intersection (legal if you are twelve). 

Just when I floored it I saw a rabbit running across the road. I was still parallel with the slow road hog and thought I might be have passed it enough to wedge my way back in the proper lane. My spindly leg was fully extended, my foot stomping on the gas pedal. I turned the wheel to avoid brer rabbit, no response.

I was doing a wheelie with all the dead weight of the five or six surfers sleeping in the back, I was hauling down the road staring at the black sky with the truck's nose in the air. I cruised for a while and eased back slowly on the accelerator and she gently nosed down like a space shuttle landing (years before the shuttle). I eased back to my lane. All the clods in back were in a heap against the back doors.

The panel truck owner was a notorious thumper (if you were twelve). He half woke up and punched a couple of the guys stacked on top of him and bellowed a cross-referenced question interspersed references to intercourse and anal passages. I just mumbled that I had to miss a rabbit. He dozed off mumbling something about, "do it again" and "kicking" my.. I couldn't make out the rest. I never told my passengers what they missed.

We did score some waves though.