That one time I hit the thing

I can’t tell you what happened in the title.
It ruins the story.

The following is resultant from a writing prompt to share an awkward moment as a snapshot from childhood. Enjoy!

Nine year old soccer Molly

I haven’t had any car accidents as a driver. Not really.

My sister-in-law is laughing when she reads this because she likes to tell me I’m a bad driver (but ask my brother about her driving…).  My rebuttal is that I get a “good driver” discount for my car insurance.

But there was that one time…

I was dropping Audrey off after soccer practice in pre-season. Senior year of high school.

Two-a-day practices in August. In the mid-Atlantic. When its 95 degrees and 90% humidity. The kind of weather where you shower and as you towel off, can’t be sure whether you are still damp from showering or already sweating again. Steam on the bathroom mirror doesn’t exist because you are basically living in steamy post-shower humidity.

Needless to say, I was pretty sweaty when I dropped Audrey off from practice.

And I needed to spit. All that running and dripping and chugging from a water bottle make one rather lady-like.

So I hand-cranked down the window of my sister’s teal 1993 Mazda Protege* and hocked a loogie.

Only- it didn’t make it out the window.

Embarrassed, but only to my own personal chagrin, I wiped it off.

Only-I was still rolling.

And I rolled right into a mailbox.

There, adjacent to Little John Drive, in the Nottingham Woods neighborhood,  around the corner from the house I spent hours attending in-home art classes as a child.

I can still see the wooden post wobbling. The steel box precariously nodding, clinging, swaying- really- on top of post.

I paused. I parked. I did what an honest small-town teenager would do.

I rang the doorbell and admitted my crime to the owner, who hesitantly opened his front door, kids in tow, and observed me from behind the glass pane of his storm door.

He looked at me with raised eyebrows and little sympathy as I half-heartedly offered to replace the mail receptacle.

He graciously declined the offer. Actually no, as I recall he looked at me blankly and barely responded, but his response indicated that no box need be bought.

I got back in my own steel box and drove away- their mailbox and my pride both barely intact.

~~~

*I drove my sister’s car Sr. year of high school when she left for college. She may have never heard this story. But her car was no worse for the wear.