It was 7:00 AM on a dreary gray day in La Vista, Nebraska. As I stepped through the front door the sky was plastered with 50 shades of gray (this was before that book was published and/or popular) and it reminded me of an inside joke a friend and I had about everything turning a shade of "dingy gray" in Nebraska. This was an especially poignant point of humor for us after her eyes changed color to a shade that could very easily be described as dingy gray. I chuckled as I observed the cloudy sky and took a deep breath of the moist air. Today was going to be a good day. I was wearing my favorite blue under armour hoodie, a nice pair of jeans, and my prized silver, orange, and teal puma shoes. I hadn't overslept for my 7:30 National Honor Society meeting and there was no pressing homework that had yet to be completed for the day, which was an unusual occurrence for a stressful junior year of high school. I hopped in my decrepit 1998 Oldsmobile Intrigue that was a shade somewhere between red and maroon, although it was getting hard to tell because the paint was beginning to peel in various elliptical spots on the body. As I backed out of the driveway my then favorite song, Panic Station by Muse, began playing through the half of my speakers that weren't blown out and my day seemed like it was just going to be that much better.
When I arrived at the intersection of Giles and 101st (Giles is the nearest major road to my house which is on 101st) and stopped at the stop sign there was heavy early morning traffic and I sat for what felt like 10 minutes just waiting for a gap in the traffic so I could turn left and get to my donuts, I mean meeting...
Finally it appeared that a gap just large enough appeared so I began to apply pressure on the accelerator, but just as I reached 8 miles per hour I heard a faint voice say "Look out!" Confused I let off the accelerator and coasted for a split second until I realized it was too late to do anything.
I then heard, no, felt a loud crunch somewhere to my left and saw a body flip over the hood of my car. The first thing that went through my head: "Oh dear God, I've killed someone, I'm going to jail forever, what will my parents think? What will they say? I'm going to jail. He's dead. Oh God I didn't even see him, where did he come from? I'm going to jail. Oh my God." That's a lot of things to go through someone's head all at once, but all I managed to say for the first few minutes was "Oh God."
After sitting in shock for a few seconds I pried my now mildly crumpled door open and stepped out in the hopes that the man was all right. I saw a bicycle on the ground and suddenly the entire scene replayed in my head. He had been riding a bicycle, that would explain why I was still alive-- for now. Despite years of being told "The first thing you do in an emergency is call 911." It had completely escaped my mind. It took a kind middle-aged woman who had apparently been in the car behind me telling me I should probably do that to remember.
The rest of the day is a blur from that point. I walked over to the man who was regaining consciousness. He had just had a chipped tooth and a totaled $2000 dollar bike. (I didn't know bikes could cost that much, but apparently they do according to our insurance company) The officer who wrote me my ticket was nice enough to call it failure to yield to a pedestrian and allowed me to take one of those awful eight hour driving safety classes to erase this incident from my record. (although somehow my insurance company still knew after we switched...) I went to school about 45 minutes late and my favorite teacher who had an off period saw that something was wrong and gave me a hug, which is still one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me.
So, what have I learned from this?
1. Bicyclists do not belong on the road. Especially when they dress in all dark colors on a day where the sky and the road are the same color and are going faster than the cars around them.
2. Bicyclists do not belong on the road. A bicycle doesn't come close even to the safety requirements of a motorcycle.
3. If you hit a bicyclist, don't tell your friends. They will make fun of you forever. FOREVER.
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