By now, you've no doubt heard about the cement truck that was stolen Sunday afternoon in Dodge County, and the subsequent hour-long chase by law enforcement. But the thing I can't wrap my head around is that the driver of the truck was an 11-year-old kid!

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If you haven't heard about this story, you can get all the details HERE. But it's pretty much this: An 11-year-old kid steals a cement truck from a construction site in Dodge Center, drives it at speeds of over 70 mph (and loses a front tire but continues driving on the rim) though Kasson and Byron before returning to Dodge Center, where he was arrested.

KTTC's Devin Bartolotta tweeted video of the chase as it was happening Sunday. But I still can't believe an 11-year-old could actually accomplish such a thing. Now, I know I'm showing my age here (and sounding like a grumpy, old guy), but when I was that age, I would have barely known how to get IN a cement truck, let alone drive one at high speeds (for a cement truck, anyway) and keep going after I'd blown a tire and was riding on the rim!

Back when I was 11, those trucks were most likely manual transmissions, and while I know how to drive one now, I'm sure, even if I could have figured out which pedal was the clutch back then, that I'd have choked the big truck off trying to release the clutch when first starting to move. That, of course, assumes I wouldn't have had any second thoughts about stealing it in the first place, which I (and most of us) surely would have.

The only thing I did that comes close to this was when I was about 13 or so and attempted to move our family's 1978 Oldsmobile Delta 88 -- which was about the size of a cement truck, come to think of it -- from our gravel driveway about 200 feet onto our lawn so I could wash it. I cut the corner too close and got it stuck between a big oak tree and our lawn shed, and had to wait for my dad, who was on-duty as a police officer, to free the behemoth when he got home. Thinking I'd damaged both the car and the shed, while anxiously waiting for him to arrive home sure gave me that proverbial pit in my stomach. (Thankfully, neither the car, the tree nor the shed were damaged in my trek, and I didn't get in too much trouble.)

I can't imagine what would possess an 11-year-old to do such a thing-- and be able to do such a thing-- these days. I guess Bob Dylan was right: The times, they are 'a changin!

 

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