By Tom, December 6, 2019 — It was the year 1949, and I was 14 during the time of this incident. I had been driving motorcycles for a year, and my friends and I were out on a ride one day. We would frequent around New York City and fill up our gas tanks for free, which was unethical. Since my uncle was the chief of the motorcycle division, my friends and I were able to get away with a lot of troublesome situations. We would drive our motorcycles around without a license, and we were able to continue our actions because of who my friend and I knew. His dad’s friend was also someone important in the local police department, so we had a lot of leeways. During this time, I had also enrolled in the National Guard, 165th Infantry Brigade. I had been frequenting the bars and no one questioned my age because I was in uniform.
One night, I had gotten into a motorcycle accident with another car and managed to make it out of the situation without a scratch on me. The situations that followed would have ended horribly, but since of the position that I was in relating to the people that I knew, I got out of the situation without even a summons. From this moment on, I had realized that my life decisions were reckless, and when I met [my wife], I had realized that I had to change my ways. You can only change your lifestyle now, at my age there is no time to change what I have done.