The Accident
On a cold and foggy morning, I awoke to the first day of my last year of high school. Nervous and anxious, I was excited to finally be a senior. I couldn’t contain my excitement as I was finally allowed to drive to school, in a car that I could unofficially call “mine”. As I pulled out of the driveway, my father had his Nikon D60 out, taking endless pictures of my sister and I off on our first day. Driving away, I could hear my mother in the distance in her usual state of paranoia, “Katie, use your windshield wipers, turn on your defrosters!” Too caught up in the moment, the typical teenager I am, I tuned her out and turned up the volume in the car.
Driving along 24th AVE, the road was quiet, calm, empty, without all those lucky ones who got to sleep in that morning. It was quiet, until I got to 198th, about three blocks from my home. I went ahead and began to take the left, the next thing I heard was my sister, at the top of her lungs: “CARRR!!!”.
About 1/100th of a second later, I saw it, a white 1998 Ford Explorer, heading west on 198th, the road I was turning onto. I felt like I was dreaming, I felt myself yelling “NO! STOP!”, hoping my car would suddenly obey my commands I helplessly yelled to it. But I wasn’t dreaming, I was fully awake, because 1/100th of a second after that, we were both stopped, a giant white streak from the Ford on my car, a dent the size of my car’s front end in the Ford.
I had slammed on my accelerator instead of my brake, and plowed into it as fast as my 143 HP hybrid engine would allow me. I sunk in my seat and as fast as everything had happened, everything began to run through my mind. So many things were running through my mind that it all of a sudden went blank, as if it went on overload and suddenly broke down. Everything that followed was truly an out of body experience:
Stepping out of the car to greet the other person, to see if they were alive. The phone call home to my parents. Both of my parents hasty arrivals’. The looks on the faces of my parents: the disappointment, the anger, the confusion, the panic. The exchange of names, insurance cards, information. The first time I saw the damage, my license plate and bits of my car lying on the ground. Being driven by my mother to school while my father brought my car home.
I must have broken down and cried in every single period throughout the day. I had yearned more than ever to go home, but by the time I got home I felt as if I’d rather be anywhere else. I walked by my car on the way to entering my house and I sat there for what felt like hours on end, with the biggest reminder of what had happened that morning. I made every move I could to avoid my parents that day, afraid of facing those whom I had so deeply disappointed.
We didn’t talk about what had happened until maybe a week later.
Alone in the car with my mother, I painfully brought up the topic that I had been crying endlessly over, the accident. The conversation was what I had expected, no they didn’t hate me, yes they were disappointed, yes they were revoking my driving privileges, and yes, I was going to have to help pay for the damages, which were likely to amount to over $2000.
Long story short, I learned one of the most important lessons of my life that day. As Winston Churchill said, “All men make mistakes but only wise men learn from their mistakes.” After moping over the accident for a month, after I had talked to the insurance agent, after I had the damages on my car repaired, after everything to be said had been said and everything to be done had been done, I decided it was time to move on. There was nothing else to do, but as Winston Churchill had suggested, which was to learn from the situation. I realized that life does go on, no matter what happens, life continues as it is. I realized I was lucky that no one was hurt, neither I nor the person whom I had crashed into. I realized I was lucky that the police weren’t called, that I didn’t receive a ticket. I was lucky that my parents had forgiven me and that mostly, I was able to learn an important, strong, vital lesson: forgive yourself for your mistakes, learn from your mistakes, and of course, don’t repeat them.
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Response to critique/revision
For me, reading my writing even to myself is always awkward, and always nervewracking, but I feel it provides a great opportunity for some revision and for some good critique - that even maybe the author may not notice the first time around when writing. However, I feel that the writing groups didn't appeal to me very much. Although I feel like I received some good criticism, especially for myself, it's hard to be completely honest. When I'm responding to an essay of someone I'm not extremely close to or don't know too well, I'm overly cautious about what I'm saying in order to not offend or upset them. For me, it's hard to hear criticism from other people which is also why I find the writing groups to be not so great, I know it's important to hear the truth yet the truth is often hard to hear. But in the end, as Ms. Knox said, the writer/reader always rules! So in conclusion, the writing groups helped me personally, in order to fix things I didn't know how to fix things I hadn't noticed, but I feel it's a bit stressful to read in front of others, to critique others essays' and to hear critiques regarding your own writing.
