I was 17 and dumb and living in Podunk, US. My friend Casey really wanted to go see her boyfriend in the next small town over, so we hopped in my car and went. Picked up her boyfriend and one of his friends. This being Nowheresville, there was nothing to do but drive around, so we're just cruising back roads that are totally unfamiliar to me, and I switch and let the local boy drive. Dumb. So dumb.

Driving, driving, driving, when Casey says she needs to pee. No problem, driving kid knows the perfect place! He takes us down a gravel Lane, past a house where some people are sitting around a campfire, and stops at an old family cemetery. Casey hops out, does her business, and is climbing into the backseat when over the hill come a gang of shouting men on ATVs. We go screaming back down that gravel lane like you wouldn't believe, probably fishtailing the whole way.

I thought that was embarrassing enough, being on someone's property in the middle of the night in a place where disrespect feels wrong in a pretty visceral way. But that wasn't the end. See, I have an uncommon name, and I sure thought I was cool to have that name and my last initial on my license plates. Remember when I said I was dumb? Yeah.

So pretty soon, the rumors are making their way through Podunk that I vandalized an old cemetery. And it gets bigger and bigger, high school teachers are asking me about it, my boyfriend's parents. By the time it get round to my dad (who was prominent in the community) it had morphed from my being somewhere I shouldn't have been to being the ringleader of a wave of people vandalizing cemeteries through three counties.

Of all the rumors that worked their way around about me, this is the one that bothers me the most. I'm still not sure my parents believe that I didn't and would never have even contemplated something so heinous. Let alone the people who don't know me. Jesus I'm glad I'm not raising my children in a tiny town.