Fender-benders eventually happen to all of us. One of my closest friends just had her first car accident.
Remember when you first started riding a bike and your dad let go? Remember what happened next?
Over a year ago, my grandmother bought me my very first car. I was 18 going on 19.
Within about a three-to-four-month window, I had four incidents involving my car, all of them linked to one another.
The car was a Datsun from 1981. It bore a garnet color, which dishonored my country, the Gator Nation. Fortunately, euphoria blocked any sense of treason.
I felt freedom at my fingertips. I sat in it for a couple of hours. I did not move a muscle.
The tin can hummed as if it were a bumblebee gliding across the pavement like butter on a skillet. I loved that car.
She was an antique, so power steering had not been incorporated into the manufacturing of my burgundy dream.
She handled very similarly to tugging your younger brother on a rusty long board. As it turns out, trying to haul a 160-pound teenager is far from the greatest idea conceived by living man. My brother, Forrest, has the scars to prove it.
My car was not nearly as lucky.
One cool night in April, my other younger brother, Noah, called me to pick him up from somewhere. I cannot remember the place.
Frustration swept over. Who really likes running errands?
On the way to pick him up, the tire popped. I nicked the curb. It sucked. Guilt washed over me, but I remember thinking that everyone screws up and makes mistakes. I do not like the baggage that comes with mistakes, so I cast the incident aside.
My step-grandfather put a new tire on the beaten clunker.
I do not know how well he screwed it on because driving home one night, coming from a friend's house, the same tire decided to roll on ahead without me.
Sparks flew. I jerked her. We skidded off the road. I was in the middle of an action movie during a crash scene, without the glamor of Hollywood, of course.
A flying wheel can really take the wind out of your sails, and my girl was out of commission for a few weeks.
On graduation day, she came back to me, still huffing and puffing. What happened next probably sums up how the rest of our lives are going to turn out.
I was late. I rushed to graduation practice but found myself lost. Taking a turn that led to back roads, I clicked on my iPhone to show me the way. Now, however, my hands were not where they should have been.
The next moment, my car tried to perform a do-it-yourself facelift with a telephone pole. I really don't think she thought that one through.
Talk about raining on my parade.
The situation burdened me. It pressed my mind. It took all the excitement and joy out of me.
I felt like the world was ending, but guess what? I graduated.
Life does not stay in the ditch forever. You have to pull her out. You have to bang out all the dents before you can move down the road.
Society works diligently in search of the magic bullet to cure all of our ailments. Life does not work without you putting forth the effort to care for it. There is a long dusty highway out in front of us with an infinite amount of exits leading anywhere.
That 1981 Datsun drove me all the way to college.
Well, almost.
Nicholas Butler is a journalism sophomore at UF. His column appears on Wednesdays.
