I graduated from Star Valley High School in May 1986. I was 18 years old.
After the graduation ceremony, I went out with some other graduates. For some reason, I was not driving "my" car, the 1980 Dodge Omni I usually drove. Instead, I was riding in Stephen Hunsaker's pickup with Steve and Erik Campbell. There may have been one other person with us, but I don't remember for sure.
Steve drove an early-1980s two-tone Chevy half-ton pickup. It belonged to Alan Merrit, who was married to Steve's sister (Eileen). Steve was driving, I was sitting in the middle, and Erik was sitting on the passenger side.
We were headed south from Afton toward a graduation party up Tin Cup. It was probably around 10:00 p.m. Steve's speedometer didn't work, so he didn't know exactly how fast he was going.
As we passed the Strawberry turnoff and the rest area just south of Thayne, we passed a Wyoming Highway Patrol car headed the other direction.
Unfortunately, Steve was speeding.
I think we were probably going 67 or 68 in a 55 mph zone. The patrol car's red and blue lights came on.
Steve pulled over on the side of the highway near the top of Hart's Hill. Because the patrol car had been traveling in the opposite direction, the trooper had to turn around before coming up behind us.
That's when Steve started yelling at me.
"Trade places with me! Trade places with me! I can't get another ticket!"
I don't know how many tickets Steve had or why another one was such a concern. We didn't stop to discuss it.
And, in one of the dumber decisions I made as a teenager, I agreed.
We were trying to move as fast as we could because we had to finish switching places before the trooper pulled up behind us and walked to the truck. Fortunately, the pickup had an automatic transmission, so there wasn't a gearshift sticking up from the floor between us.
Steve climbed over me toward the middle of the seat while I slid underneath him into the driver's seat.
By the time the patrol car pulled up behind us with its lights flashing, I was sitting behind the steering wheel, and Steve was sitting in the middle.
The trooper walked up to the driver's side window and asked for my driver's license and the vehicle registration.
I handed him my license. Steve got the registration out of the jockey box.
Then Steve started talking.
He explained that the speedometer didn't work and that it was hard to know how fast we were going.
I remember sitting there thinking, "Steve, shut up."
The adrenaline was flowing. I was nervous. Steve was nervous. And the more Steve talked from the middle seat about why "we" didn't know how fast "we" were going, the more I wondered why I had agreed to any of this.
I often knew the Wyoming Highway Patrol officers who worked in Star Valley, but I didn't know this trooper. He gave the three of us an odd look, then took my driver's license and the registration back to his patrol car.
While we waited, I had plenty of time to think about how stupid I had been to agree to switch seats.
What makes the decision even stranger is that Steve and I weren't particularly close friends. We knew each other from school and church, but we didn't normally hang out together. Yet when he yelled, "Trade places with me," I went along with it without taking much time to think about what I was doing.
Eventually, the trooper returned to the driver's side window. He returned my license and the registration and cautioned us about getting the speedometer repaired.
That was it.
No ticket. No written warning. And, most importantly, no questions about why I was driving Steve's truck.
I have always suspected he knew something wasn't quite right. Maybe he had seen enough when we passed each other to know I hadn't been behind the wheel. Maybe Steve talking from the middle seat made him suspicious. Or maybe three nervous 18-year-olds in a pickup on graduation night just looked suspicious on general principle.
Whatever he thought, he didn't say anything about it. He could also tell we hadn't been drinking. We told him we were headed to a graduation party, which was true, although we neglected to mention that it was a keg party up Tin Cup.
He let us go.
I drove the truck the rest of the way into Thayne, where we stopped at Maverik. Then Steve got back behind the wheel and drove for the rest of the night.
Looking back almost forty years later, what sticks with me isn't that we fooled a highway patrolman. I'm still not convinced we did.
What sticks with me is how quickly I agreed to do something I knew I shouldn't do simply because someone sitting next to me was urgently telling me to do it. I didn't have time to think through what could happen if the trooper caught us switching drivers. I didn't stop to ask why Steve's traffic ticket had suddenly become my problem.
I just went along with it.
Peer pressure isn't always someone spending ten minutes trying to talk you into doing something stupid. Sometimes it's someone yelling, "Trade places with me!" and giving you about five seconds to decide.
Apparently, at 18, five seconds was more than enough time for me to make a really dumb decision.
.jpeg)