potato gun fun

So when I was a teenager, or more specifically 15-17, me and my friends found plans for and constructed a potato gun made out of PVC piping. We were met with success. We did lots of fun things with our new instrument of entertainment, often destructive things. The gun could shoot a piece of potato about 2 in. tall/wide and about 3 in. thick at about....1000fps? Definitely we could shoot holes through wooden fences, 4x stacked drywall, aluminum mailboxes...in any case it was a force to be reckoned with.

On one such particular night of youthful delinquency , we were driving around in my old Nissan late at night, looking for things we could shoot our gun at. We were driving through a neighborhood and drove past an elementary school. The school had a simple lit sign in front by the street used to display announcements. We thought it would be great fun to shoot the sign, see what kind of damage we could inflict. Well so we pulled up to the sign planning to fire the gun from inside the car, but just then we noticed a car in the distance pull around a corner and was heading our direction so, in a spur of the moment decision, I pulled into a nearby alleyway and turned my lights off. The car was a little ways off, but close enough to see a stopped car quickly drive into an alley and turn the lights off (almost certainly more suspicious than just sitting in front of the sign would've been...). In any case, the car passed by us a few seconds after pulling into the alley, and I pulled out and started driving down the street away from the school, planning to drive around the block and come back. Well, so this car turns around and starts following me! I was certain it was following me because I made a point of taking frequent sudden turns around this neighborhood.

After about 2 minutes of this car following us, and us trying to figure out if we should be threatened or not, decided it was probably some nosy neighbor following us because we looked suspicious and wanted to see what we would do. So what DID we do? We stopped, they stopped about 15 ft behind me, and we loaded up the gun and my two friends got out and aimed it at them (it took two people, one to aim and the other to ignite the fuel). The car didn't do anything while they were positioning (about 6-7 seconds) and so we decided to fire it at them. However, we didn't want to get into criminal offense just yet, so they aimed high, above their car into the overhanging trees above. What proceeded was nothing short of hilarity.

The shot fired off (it had a pretty deafening boom when we did it right, and we did it right that night) and streaked through the trees above the car, causing leaves to fall down around the car. At night you could see the exploding fuel (flammable aerosol) shooting a little ways out from the barrel as the shot went off. The car immediately begins to back up quickly and attempts to turn around and go the other way, however the street is a small 2 lane street and the car is a suburban with a poor turn style so it would have to do probably a 5-point turn to turn fully around. So once it backs up as much as it can, and the people inside realize they can't escape quickly, whoever was driving just hits the horn and holds it. We jump back in the car and speed off while the car continues holding it's horn. We sped home, just dying over the whole ordeal. What I would've paid, even to this day, to know who was inside of that car, and to be able to see their reactions. What they were thinking when they began to follow us, and what they were thinking after they saw that shot go off over their car. Oh man...those were good times.