Hello, hello.
It has been quite a while, hasn’t it?
Basically I have been wandering the, sometimes misleading, path of life.
I’ve been here; I’ve been there. And many stories I have to share.
I lied. I have but one story to tell and this story occurred recently. Yes, recently indeed.
It began on a stress-filled last Friday. I had my practical test that morning for my Provisional license (I can drive without supervision) and it is fair to say that I was nervous. So nervous that I threw up yellow monkeys and slept four hours the night before. Okay, so maybe I didn’t quite throw up, but I was nervous and slightly deprived of sleep. To cut this story short, I passed the test easily.
What next? Okay so I started really enjoying the freedom of having my Provisional license, I even began driving my sister to where she needed to go. Last night I drove her to touch football and stayed until she was finished. On the way home I noted that the street was extremely dark – the moon was covered by clouds and my street lacks street-lights.
I did a wide arc to fit nicely into the driveway. I got the car halfway through the gate when: Thump. I looked to my sister and said, “Shit, what was that.”
We thought I’d driven over a cat or something. Nope, I did much, much better. I drove too close to the gate and apparently nicked it on the way out. Great. I used my phone to survey the damage. I took a look at the back of the car: a few chips of paint missing below the back tail-lights, not so bad. But I was puzzled. Hmm, I thought, how the fuck did I hit the back of the car on the gate, whilst moving forwards?
Anyway, I went to bed stressing over how I would tell the parents I had screwed up for the second time in two days – I had gotten bogged in the back yard because I rolled down the driveway onto soft dirt, as apparently you need to apply the break when moving from P to R in an automatic, or otherwise you get no brakes or accelerator.
I awoke today stressed, wondering if my father would notice the missing paint on the back of the car as he backed his own vehicle out – also, might want to mention that the car I was driving was my step-mother’s. I spent all morning worrying, so I decided to go out and see if the damage was really as bad as I thought.
I took a look at the back of the car: the missing paint was probably smaller than five cent piece (AU). Thank goodness for that, I thought. But then I had a revelation, I realised that I should probably look at the side of the car.
“Fuck!” I exclaimed.
The rear panel of the side of the car was a lot worse. A huge white stripe dominated the panel and a chip approximately 3 mm deep and a good centimeter in diameter occupied the edge of the panel. At this point I was super panicked and locked myself in my room to devise ways to minimise the damage before telling my parents about the mark.
Once again, I will cut the story short(er than it could have been).
I realised that the scratch could probably be 90% cleared by a good buff and polish, so I concluded that I’d need to drive to the auto-store and pick up some advice and supplies. But this meant I’d have to tell my step-mum who was home with me.
I told her. She took a look. She laughed, told me the back chips were her doing and the side wasn’t too bad, told me not to stress and said that everything would be fixed when the back gets repaired. She also put forth a great message that I will now keep close to heart:
Life is about learning; take your time and learn from your mistakes.
She also reminded me that my Dad has no demerit points left on his license and that I would always have that over him.
So, there you have it. Apparently stress and worry are useless emotions. Eliminate them from your life and learn from the mistakes that you make.
Also, I felt a lot better after telling the truth – no lies, no warping the truth to procure a better outcome for me.
Cheers.
Word Vortex 