Here's another story for you guys. I was reliving a horrible experince I had two summers ago - The teenage years. Some of your best memories happen while you’re in high school. But high school also brings new responsibilities to the table. The one that comes to mind by almost all teenagers would have to be getting your license. The freedom to drive where you want, go where you without having to rely on your parents. It was a great feeling of maturity that I couldn’t wait for.
About five months after I got my license, I was at work when we ran out of milk. They asked if someone who had a car could go and grab couple of gallons from the store. Given the fact that I actually had my dad’s car for the day, I happily volunteered.
I got to White Hen and purchased seven gallons of milk. It took my three trips to bring it all to my car and by the time I had finally gotten in my car, I could tell what a bad idea this was. It was almost 100 degrees outside and I was twenty minutes away from work. The milk was going to go bad and I was going to have to pay for about $30 of milk.
I decided that I could just go as fast as I could back to work. This was big decision for me because I never speed. Ever. But I was worried I would get in trouble at work so I hurried back. I had never even seen a police car in the vicinity of my work so I wasn’t worried.
In ten minutes I was almost back. I breathed a sigh a relief as I made the final turn. Just then I saw it. The black and white car following me down the road. I couldn’t believe it. I was good driver. This was the one time I had sped. He followed me back to my work and pulled in behind my car in the lot.
“Excuse me; do you know how fast you were going?”
To be honest, I had no idea. I was shaking so bad that I couldn’t even talk. I just shook my head and tried to calm myself down.
“You were doing 67 in a 45.”
“Oh my gosh,” I said not realizing I had been going that fast or that it was a 45 (I thought it was 55 but that still is really fast).
“Please hand me your license and registration and stay seated in your car.” I managed to find my stuff and hand it over. I sat in my car in shock not realizing what had just happened.
As he was filling out my ticket in his squad car I kept thinking, “I want my dad. He’ll get me out of this. It’s not a big deal. He’ll take care of it.” But when he walked back to my car and handed me my ticket and explained what I needed to do, I realized that daddy wasn’t going to be here to save me this time. I was going to have deal with this on my own. It was my time to take responsibility for what I had done, and deal with the consequences.
I would pay the $95 ticket and learn from my mistakes. While getting a ticket is not something you want to happen, it really showed me that I was going to go through some tough times in life but could always manage to get through it. I learned that I was now an adult and going to have to learn to deal with my decisions. It was a major reality check for me because I now know that there will be consequences for my actions after I move away from home. Plus I learned never, ever, under any circumstances speed. Especially for a couple gallons of milk.