When I was 16 and a recently licensed driver-wannabe, my parents, in their one foolish moment, decided I could drive - for the first time ever - on my own. To a basketball game, in my cheerleading uniform. In a January ice storm.
We lived on top of a hill and so, when I pulled the old 6-cylinder '89 Olds tank onto the road, pushing on the gas pedal as I would on any regular day, I seemed to make it down the hill in record time. Only the bottom of the hill was a curved bridge with a house at the other end.
Hello bridge curve... hello ice... hello spinning car and not-the-road. Hello screaming in my head, hello life before my eyes... hello porch. Goodbye porch. Hello stranger's living room.
There was no one home, and I was fine, so I ran across the street to call my parents. "Um, mom? Uhh... I hit a house." An hour or so later, Olds still sitting pretty
Irony of all ironies: about 5 years ago, I ran off the road in yet another snowstorm. My car wouldn't move out of the ditch, but a lovely man stopped to pick us (that would be me and The Fabulous Miss Wiener) up. Who is this lovely man, you ask? Why, the very same man who lived in the house that I hit a decade earlier. Yes, he laughed... awkwardly.
*note: we live in a small town - so small that there is no concern about getting into a car with a complete stranger on a snowy Sunday morning in your church clothes. There's a good possibility you actually know the stranger by 6 degrees of some sort. See? It's true!
13 comments:
We've got a couple of Teenage Driving Ice Storm Stories, too. Yours is a great one, though! BTW, I've given you a very Special Award. Please drop by my place to see about collecting it!
Ohmygosh! I've taken out a mailbox before but never a house!!! AWKWARD!!!
I'm glad you lived to tell about it though!
You hit a HOUSE?! Pretty impressive!!!
If you lived in a bigger town, you would have been on the news!!
'Hello bridge curve... hello ice... hello spinning car and not-the-road. Hello screaming in my head, hello life before my eyes... hello porch. Goodbye porch. Hello stranger's living room.' - LOL!! You are hilarious!! This reads like a stream-of-consciousness poem. And very, very funny about the irony of ironies.
My grandfather had a similar small-world thing happen to him. He had an infamous run-in with a nun who was teaching at the time, while he was a wild child student. Fast forward a few years, and he and his new bride rented a house. The next door neighbors turned out to be a couple consisting of a man who married the very same nun who had left the Church. ...awkward...
Ahahaa! Just to see the neighbors' faces when they pulled up to their house...eeek! And that is just priceless that the neighbor came to your aid 10 years later...you should start sending him a Christmas card if you don't already! :)
Wow! A house?! And to have that neighbor pick you up after another snowstorm incident sounds hilarious and quite awkward. :)
Can you imagine what that guy was thinking during the second mishap? Probably something along the lines of "Thank God she doesn't live uphill from us any longer." ;)
Really, really good TAT!
haha what a story!!!
I've hit a few things. Never a house though. At least the homeowner was helpful!
I guess I should be thankful that my son hasn't hit a house yet. Mailbox, yard, deer, fence, ditch, ........
That really is very funny. And what irony that the homeowner would find you and pick you up. I guess he could have driven by and laughed.
The joys of living in snow I take it. The closest I have been to that is a hydroplane over water puddles in my truck and some sideways action but all ended well.
I don't even want to know how long you were grounded or in trouble or whatever parents do to you when you run into a house. :)
Great story. Glad you had the courage to tell it. I think I might have buried that one. ;)
Wow, that is awkward! Poor guy must think you just like being off the road :P
I love this story! You are so brilliant!
:)
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