Monologue

Ever since i was little I always looked forward to growing up. I am the youngest of three and still look up to my older siblings to this day. As I grew up whatever “cool”  thing I did was never as cool as what my older siblings could do. For example, by the time I was finally allowed to go out and stay in front of my house by myself my siblings were allowed to go around the block. When I was allowed to walk to school alone they could stay home alone. Whatever privileges I had they always topped them. My parents always told me that with age comes privileges and because I am the youngest I have to deal with it. Just deal with it? Yeah right.

This childhood issue of mine caused me to make many stupid decisions in my life. One of them happened two years ago during the winter, and i must say, this was by far the worst one. It all started when all of my friends including myself turned 16. Finally, we would all be able to get our permits, one step closer to the real thing. I drove a car before this but never on the street. My  brother would sometimes take me to empty parking lots and let me drive around and that was exciting at first, but soon I found myself wanting more.

One day I decided to do the unthinkable. I decided to sneak out my moms car. My mom works in Manhattan during the week and leaves her car at home. Lucky for me I knew where she had the spare keys hidden. I called up a couple of my friends, told them my master plan, and before I knew it we were all cutting school and on our way to a nearby shopping center. What did you think I was just going to pick them up and drive them around the block? Yeah like that would be enough… I wanted to pick them up and go somewhere, anywhere, just to say I drove my friends here to do something fun. What better thing to do then shop?

Once I parked the car I felt a huge responsibility lifted from my shoulders. I was able to get there without any problems and now I would just have to get back. My friends and I hung out for a couple hours shopped at a few places and by the time it was time to leave I remembered what I had done and the huge responsibility was thrown on top of my shoulders again. As I hopped into the drivers seat I thought to myself how I was a good enough driver to make it there so getting home shouldn’t be a problem. As I drove home I kept boosting my self-confidence and before I knew it I was a block away from my house. Just as this sense of safeness began to fill my body I made the next and last turn to my house.

During the moment everything seemed to be going in slow motion but as I look back at the memory I still cant figure out what went wrong to this day. Mid-turn I noticed that the car was not turning fully and almost gliding on the street. I tried turning the wheel more and more and before I knew it I couldn’t turn anymore. I knew what was about to happen and there was nothing I could have done to stop it. I slammed on the brakes hoping to lessen the damage but it didn’t even help. Before I knew it I slid right into a parked car. Luckily the air bag didn’t come out and the car was still able to run. I quickly turned the car back on and sped away. That one minute of driving back home was the most information that was ever going through my head at the same time in my life. I was hoping that the damage was not too bad and if it was how I could lie my way out of what happened. Before I knew it I parked and thought to myself, okay here it is, the moment of truth. As I turned my head to look at the damage my jaw dropped. The headlight was smashed in to basically the middle of the fender. The grill was smashed and hood dented up. The worst part of it all was that I knew what was damaged on the inside of the car would be twice as bad as the outside.

I slowly came to my senses and decided that there was no way out of this one and called my mom. It felt like every ring that I heard lasted for at least 10 minutes until my mom finally answered the phone. After I told her what happened she didn’t even believe me at first. She thought I was just pulling a prank on her and told me not to mess with her because she was at work. Slowly but surely she began to realize it was the farthest thing from a joke.

The cost of repair turned out to be $2,500 and I ended up working the rest of the year into the summer to pay back my mom. That was the longest summer of my life. To this day I look back at this memory as not something stupid that I did but more as a lesson. I am not sure what that one lesson is, but there are plenty of lessons to be learned from this experience and I am positive it is a very important one. I just hope the owner of the car I hit doesn’t read this and find out it was me. That would be one long summer that I would NOT be looking forward to…

I’ve racked my brain pretty hard for this story as I’ve usually kept my life boring or as simple as can be. Although I do remember one time in high school, where me and one of my friends were sparing with 2 meter long sticks we found in the room. Now we were cutting class and staying in the computer room of the school, our domain as we were the technicians of the school. So we were bored we started sparing. Now we had done this many times before just for fun, where we would block attack and if we managed to hit the other person we would back away and start over. However this time was different. We started off like usual. However one particular strike left my friend cursing in pain. he was holding his hand, when uncovered his thumb was swollen. At this point we were due to go to our next class. While me and some of my spectating friends went to class, my sparring partner went to the nurse. An hour later I see him again with one of those small casts on his thumb. It turns out I broke his thumb. So after that he stopped sparring with me or anyone else for that matter.