I’m sure that everyone has heard, or maybe used, all sorts of far-fetched excuses explaining why someone was late for school, but not very many people can claim that the reason that they were late was because they were part of an event that could have ended their life! The story may seem a bit exaggerated, but it was a long time ago, and my point of view is probably a bit different than it is now.
“Come on, we are going to be late if you don’t hurry up.”
“I know, Dad I’m coming down.”
I leaped down the last few stairs, and hurried to get my shoes on.  We hustled to get into my Dad’s midnight blue tank of a SUV, and with a turn of the keys and a roar of the engine we were off. I was pretty stressed when faced with being late to my first grade class, what would even happen if I was late? I didn’t know the answer to that question, and wasn’t too keen to find out.
“Calm down, Luke, we aren’t even going to be late.”
It helped knowing that my Dad wasn’t worried about the possibility of me being late. By now we were turning out of our subdivision, when suddenly, CRASH! I jolted forward in my seat as we collided with a vehicle that seemed to appear from nowhere. I looked down at myself, it didn’t seem like I was injured, but my heart was racing and my breathing was fast and shallow.
“Don’t worry, we are going to be fine.” My Dad said reassuringly. “You stay here, I’ll go check on the other driver.”
After sitting in shock for what seemed like an hour, probably really only a few minutes, I dared to poke my head outside the window to survey the scene. Our car seemed to have survived with very little damage, in fact none, which I could see. The other car, a silver one much smaller than ours was sitting on the side of the road, looking as if the front end of it had been squished like a discarded tin can. A lady, who I assumed was the driver, was standing outside talking to my Dad. She didn’t have any visible injuries, but she seemed pretty animated about what had just happened. Just as I was considering heading out myself, my dad walked back to the car.
“Everything is going to be ok.” He said “She just needs to call her insurance company, and we can be on our way.”
He went back out, and after just a few minutes more, he got back in and we resumed our journey to my school. We lived pretty close to the school at that time, so it didn’t take very long for us to arrive after we set off. I hurried into the building, my worry causing me to move much faster than normal. I jogged down the hall, the familiar smells of markers and Elmer’s glue wafting towards me. I rounded the corner heading down my hallway, realizing with a quick glance at the clock that I was only about twenty minutes late after all. I strolled in, head held high, excited to tell my tale of adventure to my fellow classmates.
“Hey guys, you’ll never believe what happened to me on the way here.”