A Life-Threatening Accident On My Birthday

I had only ever been in this situation once up until my 18th birthday, and the eerie thing about it is that the other time it happened to have been on my 14th birthday! Now, this may seem like a bunch of baloney, but I can swear up and down that both of these events really happened. It’s almost like something about my birthday brings bad luck. I mean, even final exams land on the same day often times! Or maybe that’s just because my birthday is on December 16th? Whatever, we’ll talk about the most recent accident since I remember it more vividly.

There’s nothing worse than almost dying on a day that you’re supposed to have fun and celebrate. It was a cold and windy Saturday afternoon. The sky was cloudy, and I had been working all day, so I was pretty tired. I work with my dad in construction sometimes and it can get exhausting.

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I was just in a good mood because it was my birthday. All day I had been thinking, “I can’t wait to get off of work so that I can go out and celebrate later!”.

My plans were simple, I was going to get home at around 5pm and shower, then go out to eat with my parents at this nice Mexican restaurant called Alameda’s. After that, I was supposed to go back home and get picked up by some friends to go out to a party.

Little did I know; my plans would not go as well as I expected. I was in for a very unpleasant surprise. After work I rode home with my dad and we just talked about how the day went. It had gone pretty well, and we were both ready to go out. “How does it feel to be 18 now?” my dad said. I replied “Well, I’m starting to feel old but, I still feel like a kid at the same time. I don’t know, it’s weird. ” I feel like adolescence is a really weird time in life. It’s like you’re too old to not have your stuff together but, at the same time you’re too young to have life figured out. We got home at around 5, my older brother was home as well and was getting ready to go out. My mom and younger brothers were already set to go. “Hurry up!” My mom exclaimed. Our reservation was set for 6:30, time was ticking. The only ones left to get ready were my dad and me. I picked out an outfit, ironed my shirt, then went and took a shower. Off we were to eat some delicious Mexican food. We went in my older brother’s truck, he would be the chauffeur for the night. We made it to Alameda’s safe and sound with no problems. Everything seemed to be going well.

We had dinner and dessert then were ready to go home. It was maybe 9 p. m. , the night was still young for me. “Thanks for taking me out, the food was delicious” I told my parents as we rode home under the dark and star filled sky. We came to a four-way intersection, the light was green, and my brother accelerated calmly. “Oh snap! Watch out!” My brother exclaimed, as another truck raced toward us from the left side. “Kaboom!” the truck smashed into ours. Two seconds later, here we were in the middle of the road with a severely damaged truck. It was totally wrecked! We had gotten hit on the bed of our truck and would have gotten t-boned straight in the middle of the cab, had my brother not swerved a little out of the way just in time before the impact. We all could have been seriously injured if the impact had happened only a second earlier. My youngest brother was crying. We all got out of the vehicle and my brother went and angrily spoke with the other driver. I was in shock, nobody was hurt. I had hit my head on the window really hard but that was about it. Turns out the other driver had tried to beat his yellow light. He was incredibly scared and worried. The cops showed up and wrote him a ticket after he admitted he was at fault.

They towed both of our vehicles and we had to find a ride home. I couldn’t believe it, by now it was around 10:30 p. m. and we had to call one of my older cousins to come pick us up. He was an hour away, which only made things worse because we had to wait for him at a gas station. As we waited, I kept replaying the accident in my head. I couldn’t stop thinking about all the different scenarios that could have happened. An hour later, my cousin picked us up and we were on our way home. We made it home around 12 a. m. and I didn’t make it to the party with my friends, but I didn’t even care at that point. I was grateful nobody had gotten hurt. Yeah, the truck was in bad shape and we were going to be without it for a while, but that’s not the point. Materialistic things can be replaced, but people you love and care about cannot. Since then, I’ve learned to always be extremely careful when driving and to never take anything for granted because you never know what can happen. Life is short, so we should try and make the best of it, even when bad things happen.

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