When The Dog Bites...

First of all, I'd like to apologize for not putting up a blog post last week.  It completely slipped my mind.  To make up for that, I am going to post both this week and next week.

Now that that's taken care of, I know you're thinking, "She was bitten by a dog?!!?" or some variation.  So let me clarify, no, my dogs did not turn evil and bite me, this is a reference to the title of my blog.  If you have never seen The Sound of Music, you should because it's a classic.  If you have seen The Sound of Music you should understand the reference to the song "My Favorite Things."  Anyway, something very scary happened to me recently that I think is worth blogging about, but is definitely NOT awesome.

Two weeks ago this Friday I got into a car accident on my way to school.  You may remember that day as the day I didn't show up to my first hour class.  Or you may remember it as the day where I and some of my peers at planned parenthood taught a Junior/Senior Health Seminar.  But I will always remember October 26 as the day that I got into my first (and hopefully, but unlikely, last) car accident.

Before I go on, no one was hurt in the process, and my car was only scratched.  The worst injuries were to my and my mother's emotions.

That Friday started out like any other day.  I woke up, brushed my teeth, took a shower, and threw on some clothes.  I live pretty close to school, so parking and walking from car to class takes about as long as the actual drive.  That morning I left five minutes early, prepared to park and (hopefully) get to class on time.

As I prepared to make a left onto Green Street from Lincoln, all my Driver's Ed knowledge seemed to go out the window.  I had a green light and so did oncoming traffic.  For some reason, I thought that I had the right-of-way and went ahead and started to turn into incoming traffic.  Someone saw me and honked their horn so that I would realize what I was doing.  I quickly awoke from my stupor and slammed on the brakes.  Unfortunately, my fender still grazed the side of another car.  Thankfully I prevented a worse accident from happening, but honestly I still feel pretty dumb.

What could have made me so out of it that I could completely forget not only the rules of the road, but common sense as well?

Well first of all, my mom was out of town, throwing off my schedule a bit.  But much more importantly, something is kept secret from high school students.  Although we are constantly bombarded with the myth that the senior year of high school is easy and you can slack off, this is far from true.  I am taking some of the toughest classes that I have ever taken this year.  On top of that, I have a pile of college applications to finish.  Senior year is not easy.  It is extremely stressful and anyone who says otherwise is either deluding themselves or is just much better at dealing with pressure than I am.

So as I was contemplating the seemingly never-ending mountain of mundane tasks I needed to complete, I checked out of reality.  The result was not catastrophic; but it could have been.  I don't even want to think about what would have happened if I were listening to loud music and hadn't heard the other car's warning.  The ticket and the cost of the repairs on the car I hit (which I have to pay for) comes to a grand total of about $1500.  I honestly don't know what I would have done if I had injured someone let alone killed a person.

My day was not great, but it could have been a lot worse.  I'm thankful that all that was taken was my license, and not a life.