Highway 17 is a relatively dangerous drive. It's not Ice Road Truckers dangerous by any stretch, but it does take some getting used to...and when the sign says slow down you'd best be slowing down, especially in the rain. Anyway, the son, who I think is around 20, was driving too fast, in the rain, and spun his car around into the median. Fortunately, or perhaps miraculously, he wasn't hurt and no other cars were involved. The damage to his car wasn't too bad, probably because it is an older car, but it wasn't minor either. I think she said they got an estimate for a couple of thousand bucks. A lot of money, to be sure, but not THAT much...
The discussion in our carpool that ensued, but in which I did not participate, was how much of the cost should the son be required to pay to ensure that he "learned his lesson."
This brought me back to my younger years, which, I'm not too ashamed to admit, were NOT free of vehicular folly. One incident, as I recall, occurred at the intersection of Routes 42 and 69 in the Connecticut River Valley, a heavily wooded area not totally unlike Highway 17. There's a traffic light there now, but there wasn't back then...
Like the son of my carpool mate, I learned a lesson that day: Car accidents are REALLY freakin' scary! They don't happen in slow motion, like in the movies. They're quick, and violent, and you don't have any idea what's going on until it's over. After the car stops moving, your heart is still racing, your hands are shaking, and all you really want to do is close your eyes and cry. It's horrible! If you're lucky, like I was, then that's the worst of it...
I'm sure all parents' first thought is hoping their kid is unhurt, then hoping everyone else involved is okay, too. What a parent does next is what writes the next lesson learned. My parents understood that I was scared, and embarrassed, and no amount of yelling or financial burden was going to make that first lesson any stronger.
The lesson my parents taught me was this: They had my back, no matter what! Most parents will tell you that they'd support their kids through think and thin. Choosing to impose a well-crafted, but still arbitrary, punishment, and calling it a "lesson" wouldn't have taught me anything about safe driving. Now, I'm not saying that there shouldn't be consequences, but that's not the same thing. The fact is that my parents chose to use something horrible as an opportunity to "walk the talk" and that's a lesson I'll never forget...
