Crack Hedger's dog.

I was in 10th grade when I met Crack Hedger. It was the first day of school, and he was one of the incoming 7th graders riding my bus for the first time. My friend John and I were trying to talk to the new kids, and giving a couple of them new names. Most of the kids were obnoxious smartasses, but Crack seemed like a cool guy. His name was Joe, but we decided it would be Crack. Our logic was that Joe was white, and crack was white, and crack was also hilarious, so it was a good name.

I turned 16 that year, and my grandpa gave me my first car, a beat-up 1988 Dodge Colt, nicknamed the Chudmobile. The car was white, chud was white, and chud was also hilarious, so it was a good name. Crack offered to fix up my car stereo, for free, so I started going over to his house and letting him work on it. He put a new tape deck in, and installed an amp and some big speakers. He even built me a big speaker box to sit in the back of the car so I could drive around, bassing people out with a deep, low-end sound that made all the loose bits in my car rattle. All the parts came from a junkyard down the road from where he lived, and he said the guy who owned all the junk cars there told him he could take whatever he wanted.

Crack lived a few minutes away from me, in a house along a gravel road, with no other houses nearby. His place had an old bomb shelter and a lot of animals. As we started hanging out more, I got used to his dogs chasing my car as I drove away. I was scared of hitting them at first, but Crack told me just to drive and they would get out of the way. With time, my fear of running over one of his dogs subsided.

One summer afternoon, my friends and I decided to take a trip to the mall. There wasn't really any reason for it, but it was something to do. Living out in the middle of nowhere, the mall was a 40 minute drive away. I picked up John, and then went to go pick up Crack, the plan being to pick up my friend Sean next.

As we pulled away from Crack's house, his dogs started chasing my car, as they usually did. Like always, I just drove as if they weren't there, knowing they would get out of the way.

And then one of Crack's dogs ran right in front of my car.

"Fuck! No!" I yelled as my car drove over the dog. There were two sickening thumps as each tire on the passenger side squished the dog.

We stopped the car and got out. The dog lay in a heap, twisted and whimpering.

"Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck, man," I said. As an animal-loving vegetarian kid, I was a bit freaked-the-fuck out.

"It's alright, man," Crack told me. He calmly scooped up the dog, a decently-sized Australian Shepard, and got back in the car. As we drove back to his house, the dog bit him and then puked on him.

We got back to his house and got out of the car. His dad and his grandpa came out of the house as Crack set the dog on the ground. I saw that it was dead, and started crying.

"It's alright, man," he told me. He didn't seem to care at all.

"I killed your fucking dog, man!" I said, wiping tears from my face.

"Shhh!" he whispered, not wanting the adults to hear me say "fuck."

His grandpa grabbed a shovel, and started walking out somewhere to dig a hole to bury the dog in. As he walked, a poodle started yapping at him and following close behind.

"Shut up, you son of a bitch!" the old man yelled, causing me to stop crying and start laughing.

Crack's sister came outside and saw my wet face.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"I've never seen a punk cry," she said.

We left again, picked up Sean, and went to the mall. I didn't really feel like going anymore, but we went, anyway.

I felt like shit for a week or so. My dad told me to get Crack a new dog, so I offered to do so. Crack declined, saying, "Don't worry about it, man. That dog was stupid as hell, anyway. Nobody cares."

Crack Hedger died four years ago today in a car crash. He was 19 years old.

"I misplaced your dipstick."

I've needed an oil change for the last 500 miles or so, and I finally got one today. I was fairly oblivious as the guy did his work, and then he said, "OK, go ahead and start up your engine now." I did, and a few seconds later, my car shook and the engine died.

"What the hell was that?" asked the guy changing the oil in the car next to mine. He came over and started looking under my hood. Within seconds, four oil-change guys were looking under my hood, sticking their hands deep inside the dirty black machinery that I don't understand.

"Go ahead and take your keys out of the ignition and throw them on the dashboard," the oldest one told me. I did, and they continued to poke around. After a couple minutes, the guy who was originally changing my oil came to my window.

"OK, sir, what happened is I misplaced your dipstick," he told me.

"Alright," I said.

"Yeah, we'll have it out in a second, it should be fine," he said, and went back to work.

After a couple more minutes, the oldest one asked me to step out of the car. I did, and he got in. He started the car for a split second, making an ugly grinding noise. The guys under the hood poked around, and then he started the car for a split second again. He did it one more time, and then got out of the car and told me I could get back in. After some more mucking about, there were exclamations of relief from the guys under my hood. The dipstick had been recovered.

"We got it," the first guy told me, "Everything looks good."

"OK," I said.

"Yeah, everything looks fine," another guy said. "If you have any problem with it at all, or if you just want to have somebody look at it, just bring it back here. Ask for me, I'm a store manager." I looked at his shirt and made a mental note to talk to Dave if anything should go wrong.

"Alright, cool," I said.

"Are you also a student," the first guy asked as he rang me up.

"Yeah," I lied, "but I don't have my student ID." I figured I deserved some kind of discount after they "misplaced" my dipstick, but I would have tried to get the student discount, anyway.

"No problem," he said, "We'll take care of that for you."

It seems kind of stupid that a guy who changes oil for a living could "misplace" my dipstick. I kind of wish they would have told me exactly what happened, but I probably wouldn't have understood it. I'm clueless about cars. At least this time they didn't try to sell me a bunch of shit I didn't need.