By Zach Layton (with a little help from his Uncle Jeff)
Today is my 7th birthday. You may not remember your 7th birthday, but I sure will. That’s because today was the best day of my life. And I’m going to tell you why in two simple words: 1. Destruction 2. Derby.
Cars are my favorite things in the whole wide world. Big cars, little cars, shiny cars, Matchbox cars, Lego cars, and especially cars named Lightning McQueen. My family can usually find me lining up cars on the edge of a table. I could look at cars for hours and hours and never get bored.
But I’ve never seen anything like what I saw on my 7th birthday. When I first got to the destruction derby, I was a little nervous because the cars were super loud, so I was sure glad I had my ear protection!
The cars started racing around in a big circle on a dirt track. A few of the cars started to bump into one another. But I learned that it’s OK, because that’s how destruction derby gets its name. Two cars went into a corner side-by-side and the inside car pushed the other so hard he spun out. “Whoa!” I yelled. I couldn’t believe it!
This one time, a car crashed into a little truck, and the truck flipped over. When that happened, there was a loud siren and everybody stopped. A bunch of men ran onto the track and pushed him back over. The driver must have been OK because the men ran off and everybody kept going!
When I was little (well, little-er) and a wheel fell off one of my toy cars, I would say, “Oh-oh it’s broken!” Once a wheel came off, I knew the car was done. After all, a car can’t drive on ONLY three wheels, right? Nope. When a big green car got hit, his front wheel popped off and bounced across the track, and I thought, “That’s it, he’s broken.” But do you know what he did? He kept going! Even on three wheels, he went around and around, and even crashed into other cars!
But the best was yet to come. After the races were finished, the cars still working came onto the track – all at the same time – and they just drove around wherever they wanted, hitting anything that moved. When a car got stuck in the mud, it didn’t matter – the other cars would just get up some speed, and POW! They’d hit him so hard they’d break his axel.
One-by-one, all the cars broke down until there were only two left. One moved really slowly, but the driver wouldn’t pull his flag (that’s what they do when they give up). The other car was still running fast, and the driver put his car into reverse (to save his engine, my uncle told me later) and he rammed that little car over and over until he stopped moving. Then – this was my favorite part – the winning car went all the way across the track, to get as much speed as possible. He rammed the car so hard, he rolled it over and he ended up on TOP of him. It looked a lot like how it looks when my uncle pins me down to tickle me.
So anyway, if you forgot what it’s like feel 7 years old, or if you have a birthday this summer, you should go to your local destruction derby, pay the 11 bucks, sit back with a corn dog dipped in mustard and get ready for the best day of your life.
