A true story!

So I was reminiscing with my dummy, Rob Wagman, and we were trying to figure out if we were both in Rhode Island at the same time, 15 years ago or so. I had a cottage on a lake there and he was working in radio at the time, picking up underage girls in the area.

I thought it would be a neat coincidence if perhaps he had fallen prey to our "pull the stuffed animal across the street to make the people think it's a dog so they slam on their brakes" trick. My friends and I used to pull all sorts of harmless pranks back then; starting fires, breaking windows, making fake phone calls to 911. Kid's stuff like that.

Anyway, my dummy told me that in fact he had never been a victim of that particular prank. Usually, what would happen is, people would see the stuffed animal going across the street, think it was a dog, start to put on their brakes, but then realize that it was just a stuffed animal and run it over. Most of them would drive off or yell an obscenity out the window but sometimes we'd get a real backwoods psycho who would stop and chase us.

You have to understand that this part of Rhode Island was on the "rural" side and if somebody was enough of a jerk to stop and chase some kids into the woods, they probably had more than a "stern talking to" in mind if they caught us. So we could have been literally running for our lives.

We had some close calls, believe me. But it was all good, clean fun. Nobody ever got killed. Well that's not exactly true, there was that one time... I don't know if I should really tell this story but I think the statute of limitations has expired, so what the hell, right?

Anyway, we figured out that the reason the dog trick wasn't working was because we were pulling it across too early. We realized that if we pulled it out quickly right before the car passed, people would really only see a blur and get startled and slam on their brakes. We pulled this trick, rather successfully I might say, fifteen or twenty times one afternoon. We didn't even have to run because if we stayed hidden, most of the cars would just drive off. They were probably like "Shit, I just ran over some kid's dog, I don't want to deal with that." So they were assholes and deserved what they got, right?

Anyway, it was getting late and we were ready to pack it in, but we decided to go one more time. This blue sedan was coming down the street, I remember telling my friend Smuckers, "they look like a bunch of jerks." We hid in the bushes and right before the car passed us, I yanked the shit out of the stuffed animal and it flew up and hit the car's windshield.

Well this must have scared the shit out of these people because they slammed on their fucking brakes and they jerked the wheel to the left and plowed their car into a tree along the opposite side of the street at about 40 miles an hour!

So we're all just sitting there in the bushes, looking at each other like, "what the hell? Did that really just happen?" when the fucking car blows up! Seriously, huge fucking fireball! I can still feel the heat on my face.

Well, naturally, we grabbed the stuffed animal and got the fuck out of there. Holy shit, it was funny. Some of my friends freaked out but I calmed them down and told them we had to keep quiet about this. I scared them with some made up stories about reform school or something. We all agreed to tell everyone we had been swimming and we buried the teddy bear in the woods and went down to the lake.

Luckily for us, everyone in the car died so there were no witnesses and no evidence that any foul play was involved. The cops came to the conclusion that a deer or something must have spooked the driver and caused him to lose control. Good guess! Close but no cigar, as they say.

My friends kept their mouths shut and nobody went to jail. As far as I know, this is the first time anybody's ever heard this story, so consider yourself priviliged. And don't go fucking squealing on me either.