Chelsey's Big Adventure
Point the First: I am okay. The car is mostly okay.
Point the Second: Wren is awesomeness squared and is now my hero. Sorry to those of you who were occupying that place before, but you can't beat someone who keeps their cool after you call them twice (2 a.m. and 4 a.m.) babbling Point the First at high pitch and speed. She was even calming and reassuring 3 seconds after being woken up. Very, very heroic.
Point the Third: If I call you in the middle of the night and let you know I'm okay, and my car is okay, and I'm on HWY 104, and then I say, "please hurry," I probably don't mean, "Go right back to sleep, Mom. I'm on my way home from Madison and decided to wake you up to tell you."
Point the Fourth: I was an idiot for not saying, "Help! I'm stuck in a ditch!"
Point the Fifth: How come, the younger you are, the less your brain goes, "HEY! This is terrifying!" and the more your brain goes, "Ooops. Well, this is kinda neat. I've never done this before...I wonder how it will turn out?" Because I was kind of expecting the former, but apparently, I'm young and stupid enough to feel the latter instead. This hopefully does not mean that I will begin having accidents at a regular rate in order to experience things I've never done before.
Point the Sixth: People are so kind. I kept track, and even between the hours of 2 am and 4 am, 6 people pulled over to at least ask if I was okay and needed help. 6. That's a big number for a backroad at o'dark early. And every one of them was male, so Good Job, Boys! Way to be chivalrous and helpful and caring and all kinds of good adjectives. Well done, well done.
Point the Seventh: I huuuuuuurt.
The Story: So, I went to visit Wren and be both slave driver and slave labor, which was a fun dicotomy and I recommend you all help her move on Thursday. I stayed up late and saw her new hippie apartment (oh, it's a neat place! Really neat!), and then had Medication Needs, so I decided to drive home. Notice, please, that at this point, I'd had no alcohol. None.
I was driving, and the sign for the next road came up, and I went, Oooo. I should slow down since it's a little slippery. So I pressed on the brake. The brake pressed on the wheel, the wheel hit an ice patch, and after that... well, I panicked and it wasn't very pretty. Luckily, there's like, four feet of snow in ditches these days, which shielded me from extreme impact. I ended up 170* from my starting orientation, in the opposite ditch, breathing shallowly and reaching for my cell phone. I called my mom (see Point the Third) and Wren (see Point the Second) and settled in to wait for Mom and Dad to get there to pick me up and take me home. Luckily, Wren had given me two sacks full of books, so I was well-occupied. An hour and a half later, no Mom and Dad had shown (see Point the Third). So I called home again. My Dad, being a worry-wart, had been sitting up waiting for me to get home, imagining me dead in a ditch. So hearing my voice telling him I was alive in a ditch was less than fully comforting, but he handled it well and hauled butt out to get me. Then I received the best grown-man-to-grown-child lecture I have ever received in my life ("Well, if you're coming back to live under our roof, you won't be going to Madison if there's snow, I can tell you that right now.")
Then I called a tow, and called the sherriff, and then called the other sherriff, because aparently, we had crossed counties by crossing the center line. Then I called a car shop and left a message. Then I took a shower, took meds, hugged my parents, and went to bed.
When I woke up, I discovered I do a pretty good imitation of a pissy hunchback. But luckily, all the car needs is a re-alignment (probably, hopefully). And, even luckier still, my parents have a junker they'll let me drive until this weekend, when I can have my abused, valient lady back again.
Whichever one of you lent or wished me the luck to get through all this with good spirits and good health, Thank You. You have no idea how grateful I am to be safe and happy and drinking chamomile tea right now, with my car nestled in the driveway, leaking no fluids and bristling with no broken (or even dented) body parts.
Also, Wren, I owe you some serious booze and cookies and chocolate. Come to Twelfth Night and I'll start repaying you.