Accidents happen

She made it three months. Three whole months basically accident free. At least with any other driver, because we did have the little incident where we tore into the driveway a tad too quickly bonking our side view mirror on the basketball goal popping the mirror out right out of its case. But other than that, accident free!

My oldest got her license the middle of February, the happiest day of her life, and had three months of fun and care-free days, but by the middle of May, came the wakeup call. That perhaps maybe she doesn't always "got it" and my advice to "not always trust your mirrors when you're backing up" snuck up and smacked her across the face.

Her and her younger sister were having a high time one Friday afternoon shooting baskets and goofing around, and decided afterwards, to run down to the convenience store, ya know, since they can now, and get themselves a nice, cold Dr. Pepper slushie. I was in the house about to drift off when it hit me that they'd been gone an unusually long time and I kinda started to worry, which is the job of a mom who has a 16-year-old new driver. Call it Mother's intuition or something, but just as the worries started to fill my head, the phone buzzed and she texted that she had a small problem at the store but she was "taking care of it....."

"Taking care of it..."?? Like I'm going to accept that and respond, "Okay, sounds good! Appreciate yar checking in!" Wrong! I called her right up. She said hello and then quickly handed her phone to her sister, who then informed me that they were both OK but she had backed into someone, but it wasn't bad and they were just waiting for the cops to finish up but I didn't need to come down there. COPS!! Ya right, not come down there. I jumped in the truck and raced down there, picturing the cops reading my innocent 16 year old her rights, or at minimum, the other car owner giving her the riot act cause her parents weren't around. I was ready and willing to face anyone who was there!

However, the whole ordeal was much better than I had worked up in my mind. There were no bumpers hanging off vehicles or mangled tail lights strewn on the parking lot. The other car owner wasn't even present and the police officer must have had kids himself because he couldn't have been nicer. My daughter's car didn't have a scratch on it and the other car's bumper had a dent and crack. When I approached her, she was a mess and rightfully so. She's kind of a quiet kid, not considered a wild child, but more of a major people pleaser so this incident rocked her world. She was so afraid and couldn't stop crying and I felt awful for her and remembered the first time I had an accident and how bad I felt.

I looked at the two large Dr. Pepper slushies sitting in her cup holders melting back into just soda and saw two small bags of unopened sour candy sitting beside them and thought what a fun day they were having before all this chaos happened. Poor kids.... A Friday afternoon at the local gas station, with a lot of traffic in a small parking lot doesn't lend itself to easy maneuvering so I guess an accident was bound to happen.

I wish it wouldn't have but as with any bad situation, lessons are learned and accidents are inevitable, at any age. Glad everyone was OK and thankful for the kind adults that took pity on my blubbering teenager who was panicky and devastated.