It was a beautiful crisp evening in May and I was on my way to a bridal shower in Silver Creek, a neighborhood in the boonies of Park City. I called my friend Alissa for directions to the house and quickly scribbled them down on a fuchsia post it note and stuck it to my dash. There was no way I’d get lost. I got to the end of my street and realized, crap! I forgot the present. I put my car in reverse and backed down the street, tires crying and neighbors shouting at me to slow down.
Five and a half seconds later I was back on the road. I hadn’t seen most of the girls that were going to be there since we’d graduated from high school. I, personally, liked to keep all of those painful memories of my senior year banished somewhere in the back of my mind only to resurface when someone from the past called up to remind me how miserable I was back then.
Now I was headed back into torture and did so only willing because a few people I held near and dear to my heart would be there and I hadn’t seen them in a long time. I tried to think about other things as I found myself reliving some of the “Fast Times at” Park City High. Nothing really worked so I cranked my stereo so loud that my rear view mirror was vibrating to the beat of the bass.
Twenty minutes later I finally turned onto Red Hawk Road, a dirt road that was so bumpy it gave my back a message. I carefully read the sticky-note, follow Red Hawk all the way to the top, and don’t take any other road. “Shouldn’t be too hard,” I thought to myself. What felt like an eternity of dirt road and only being able to go about fifteen miles per hour, Red Hawk Road made a sudden right. Finally, a change. My car loomed down the steep right and right into the mud. A constant prayer of, “Please, don’t get stuck,” found its way to my lips. Now going at a snail’s pace, my four cylinder car crept through the thick oozing mud that was as peanut butter. One wrong move and I’d be stuck; I really didn’t need to be teased about getting stuck.
I was finally out of the mud; my car definitely needed a wash, now. The road seemed a bit rural for a neighborhood, so I called Alissa to make sure that I wrote the directions down right.
“Hey Alissa,” I said with a bit of an underlying nervous tone, “So I’m not sure I’m in the right place.”
Alissa said to me,“ Well, where are you?” the curiosity getting to her. She had gotten lost with me a lot in high school. I always took the wrong road and never knew where I was at.
“Well there are a lot of trees, mud and an unpaved road, and I’m still on Red Hawk, I turned right when it did, are you sure that is where I’m supposed to be?”
She laughed and her sing-song voice replied, “Look, if you’re on Red Hawk, you’re fine. Don’t be such a pansy.”
I hung up annoyed that she’d call me a pansy, but the truth hurts. I kept driving on the road; all of a sudden, I saw a ditch. Completely puzzled, I pulled my car up to it. It was about a foot and a half deep and about thirty inches across. It was made from the gravel that was being placed on the dirt road. I hit re-dial, completely confused at what to do; there was no way my car would get over that.
I questioned Alissa about the ditch, without even saying hello; good friends don’t need an introduction of who is calling, especially when you just got off the phone with them thirty seconds earlier.
“What do you mean a ditch?” she asked, completely perplexed and probably rethinking how intelligent I really was. I explained where I was and told her I followed the directions exactly. She concluded that I was just being my usual self, a pansy and that I needed to suck it up and just get there. If her little Subaru could make it so could my Cobalt.
I swallowed hard, looked at the ditch again and decided I would prove her wrong. I wasn’t a pansy.
I slowly backed my car up about fifty feet. I looked at the ditch again and muttered under my breath, “If her stupid car can get over this, then so can mine.” I put my car in first and decided from that moment on I was no longer a pansy.
I slammed my foot on the gas and little rocks flew from underneath the wheels. The distance from my car to the ditch was quickly shrinking as my car slowly accelerated. Only forty-five feet away, my breathing got a little faster. Thirty-five feet away, my heart was beating almost out of my chest. Fifteen feet away, my adrenaline was now pumping, my knuckle turned white as they clenched the steering wheel. Five feet left, there was no turning back at this point. I threw a couple of Hail Mary’s, even though I’m not catholic. It was the quickest way I could think to pray. Then suddenly my car was soaring through the air, then, it dropped like a lead balloon. My car’s first flight was cut short as it nosed dived into the ditch.
My heart sunk. I jumped out of my car to assess the damages, thinking that I had massacred it, but some miracle had granted my car no injuries. I got back into the car. I tried to drive it out of the ditch, but it was no use. I tucked my tail between my legs and put my ego to bed. I called Alissa again.
Five minutes later and with Alissa still laughing like a hyena, we drove away from my car as it lay in its coffin. I was defeated. So much for proving I wasn’t a pansy. I would never live this one down.
We finally towed my car out of the ditch and back through the thick mud. As I was driving home that night, I realized that my suppressed memories from high school all involved my silly antics. Until now I didn’t appreciate them. I guess there are worse things to be known as then the class clown or pansy. I could’ve been known as the class princess or person with the best body, knowing that I hit my peak in high school.
These are just a few of my friends from Park City (This was taken at Alissa's wedding in August)
