So I had a babysitting job on the deep west side of town. I had to admit, as I drove to the house, I was more than a little nervous about being alone on the west side with a 3 year old kid but hey, I can take care of myself right? Honestly, the kid was very good. No complaints there. We danced to a musical magical Santa snow globe, watched Baby Einstein (whose videos I'm now convinced were written by sophisticated druggies that loved Mozart) and ate chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs. All in all, a very satisfactory evening. After I bathed, read Curious George to, prayed for, and tucked him into bed, I went to the table and studied for my Spanish final.
Around 10:30, his mom came home and we chatted for about 15 minutes. Seeing it was 10:45, I politely thanked her for paying me and told her I had to get home because I had practice early the next morning. As I walked to the front door, she gave me a funny look and said, "It's pretty cold outside." Completely oblivious to why she would be telling me this, I flashed a smile and answered, "Oh, yes ma'am. It was like 60 last night!" Still looking at me like I had just explained I ate rats for dinner, she again said, "No, it's really cold out there." I hesitated slightly, clueless as to why she was harping on this seemingly small issue. In Texas, "really cold" is relative. For instance, our idea of parka weather is when the temperature drops below 60, a white Christmas is when someone has a dandruff attack all over the gifts, and we think snow wheels are what Santa uses when Rudolph calls in sick (*edit: I've just been informed that the term is "snow tires"...I think this only proves my point once again*) It had been 85 degrees earlier and I was in soffees and a T-shirt. (My friend, upon hearing this story, told me those were "ho shorts" but really, I wasn't going to leave the house, she's a single mom and the kid is like 3. It's not like I was trying to entice anyone) How cold could it have gotten? "Yes ma'am, I'll stay warm." I again assured her as I reached for the doorknob.
Upon opening the door, my confident demeanor fell instantly, as a 400 mph gust of freezing cold wind mercilessly assaulted my pathetic excuse for clothes. Staggering to my car, I wryly reflected on my flippantly naive answer and the fickle nature of Texas weather that had gone from 85 to –85 in a matter of a few hours. Wrenching open the car door, I threw myself into the drivers seat and encountered a little known phenomenon--when it is cold outside of the car and you have a warm body inside the car, chances are your windows will being to fog. As I watched the icy slush begin to drop in pellets outside, my foreboding slowly rose proportionally to the creeping fogginess now displaying itself across my windshield. After a few moments of deep thought (not) I turned on my car, figuring that, despite this new wrench thrown in my otherwise oblivious existence, it wouldn't be so difficult to find my way out of the subdivision and, by then, the windshield would be clear and I'd be on my merry way. This was my first mistake. I couldn't find my way out of a one way tunnel with signposts broadcasting "THIS WAY ONLY" in glaring neon lights My dad says I'm directionally challenged, I say I just have better things to worry about than looking at signs all day. Anyways, I most definitely was not going to be able to find my way out of an unfamiliar neighborhood at 11:00 at night in the sleet. Sure enough, I knew something was wrong when, after driving around for a few minutes, my headlights shone onto an in-the-process-of-being renovated house sitting eerily innocent in a dead end.
Letting out a loud sigh, I forlornly wondered how lost I was this time as I put my car into reverse and began to back up so I could turn around. As I turned my wheel and accelerated forward, my headlights encountered a new sight: A vast area of paved concrete, like a driveway for giants. It briefly crossed my mind that this was not normal and I was disgustedly considering the inadequacy of contractors in this world when I heard a loud "bamcrunchsmash!" and was thrown against my steering wheel with enough force to kill several small animals. "Holy Crap!" I yelled, swiveling my head to try and assess what had just happened. I threw my car into reverse, vainly trying to back up, and was rewarded with the “scrreeeeech” of tires and an odious smell of burning rubber. Whimpering slightly, I opened my door into the slushy, icy wind that could have killed a penguin and let out a yelp/snarl/squeak of surprise. I don’t know how I did it, but I had run up onto a random 500 lb boulder that was sitting in a patch of grass with two other random boulders. Right there, in the middle of the giant’s driveway, my car was marooned on an island of rock; front end suspended in the air, poor, pathetic tires spinning uselessly.
“Oh man, Oh man, Oh man,“ I repeated over and over, wondering what the survival rate was for teenage girls on the west side at 11 at night. I was willing to bet it wasn’t good. Looking back, I am positive that I could have run my car against that rock 10,000 times and not have gotten it into the position I had it in. Only when I was on the deep west side, at 11 at night, in soffee shorts and a t-shirt, in the freezing slush…then I could probably duplicate this phenomenon. Forced back into my car by the freezing sleet that threatened to eat my face off, I sat in the drivers seat and mulled over my options. Which was one. Call my parents. Ouch. While the phone was ringing I frantically tried to conjure the words to relate my delicate situation. I heard the phone pick up and my mom’s voice through the receiver, “Hello?” My suave and debonair answer? “Uh, mom? I think..um…Iduhm…uhmI…did something bad.” "WHAT! What’s wrong? Alysa? What happened!?” I was halfway through explaining my incident when there was confusion on the other line and my dad’s rough voice crackled through the speaker,” Where are you? We’re coming to get you.” Click. The phone went dead. But I wasn’t left in that icy solitude for long. 3 seconds later, the phone began to ring, “Alysa, where the heck are you?” After I attempted to relate the general direction of my co-ordinates, the phone once again clicked dead.
I was really left alone to my solitude now. I fleetingly wondered what kind of idiot puts random rocks in the middle of nowhere and vowed that if I ever found him, he’d better be able to outrun me for his sake-- because I'd be chasing him holding a baseball bat. So there I was. On the west side, 11 at night, in shorts, in the freezing sleet, stuck on a 500 lb rock, afraid to use the heater for fear my car would explode, and slowly freezing to death. I alternately yelled/got scared when a car drove by/beat my steering wheel in anger when I realized how retarded my situation was/yelled again/beat my steering wheel some more for good measure. But mostly I just sat with my arms wrapped around myself, trying to ignore the fact that I was slowly losing feeling below my ankles.
73 1/2 hours later, my mom called. “Alysa? We’re really close, can you tell us what you saw on your way there?” I relayed my stellar, helpful information such as “I think there was some little old taco stand somewhere,” and, “It’s kinda countryish and abandoned around here but not really countryish,” and” I think there was a fireworks stand somewhere.” Ok, so I’m a little hazy on landmarks sometimes. Anyways, my directions must have been pretty good (or they just knew where they were going) because pretty soon, my mom’s voice came on the line again, “Ok, can you tell me if the entrance is obvious or is it like hole-in-the-wall?” “Um…” I tried to think back. “It’s pretty hole-in-the-wall. Like if you aren’t looking hard for it, you’ll miss it. But there is a little special lane for people that want to get in.” My mom paused,”…a turn lane?” So I forgot they had a name. “Yes ma’am, a turn lane.” A few more minutes passed and my mom came on once more,” Sweetheart? Did you say the subdivision is Firebird trails?” “Yes ma’am.” Her frustrated voice exploded into the phone. “Alysa! The entrance has a 50-foot sign with big bright lights showing “FIREBIRD TRAILS” in big letters and the whole thing is flanked by tall white walls. You could see this thing from the moon!” Oops. I must’ve missed that. I saw the telltale headlights followed by the huge homeschooler bus rumbling down the side street where I was stranded. I calmly told my mom that they were really close by yelling, “STOP HERE! TurnleftturnleftrighthereTURN!” The ambling white monster, lights slicing through the sleet, slowly turned and as light fell across my pathetic car, I heard my mom’s slight intake of breath on the other end of the phone, “Oh my gosh…”
As my parents got out of the suburban and eyed my car, I extricated myself from the drivers seat and edged out against the sleet now falling in a hard slant. Suddenly, I was attacked by my mother, who wrapped me in her arms and mumbled over and over, “ThankyouJesus,thankyouLord,ohmybaby,Iloveyousomuch…” The warm feeling of relief I felt was dampened as I heard a voice from the other side of the car, ”Holy sh**! How the he** did you do this!?” Eying my dad over my mom’s shoulder, I wondered how fast I could run in flip flops in the event that my dad decided 4 kids were enough and he wanted to get rid of this one. Thankfully, he decided not to come after me because you better believe I would’ve been halfway to Canada by this time. After trying to manually lift the front of the car off the rock (I could’ve told him this wouldn’t work but I figured silence was the policy of the night for me) he turned to me and said,” Get in the car and hold the steering wheel hard left, that’s the one that makes an “L.” Do not let go of the steering wheel!” So, swallowing a sarcastic retort in response to the jab about left making an “L,” I got into the car and did as he said, and for the second time that night there was a sound like a rock giving birth and my car was free. Before I could even get out to see what atrocities the front of my car had suffered, my dad opened my door and with a gruff, ”Move over,” he sat down in the drivers seat.
I’m not going to share the 40-minute lecture I received the entire car ride home. (This was after we talked about defrosting the windshield completely while we waited for just that to happen for 10 minutes) I’m also not telling the enormous blow my checking account is suffering, but trust me, it’s enough to make a grown man weep. All I’ll say is there are those rare teenage moments when you remember that you are one of the most vulnerable people on the face of this earth. When you realize that you are just another person among millions of other people and the world will not cease to rotate just because you are in trouble, your perspective changes. At least, mine did. You also realize how much grace you are shown on a daily basis, because I have news for you. If it was me and my kid was stuck out there, I’d have wished them luck and hoped it didn’t freeze to hard that night (juuust kiddingJ)
Had I not had people that love me unconditionally, I don’t know how I would’ve gotten myself out of that mess. Despite my dad’s lecture, he ended with “I’m glad you’re ok, just learn your lesson and it’s all going to be fine.” So I just realized that if I can’t laugh at this, it all happened for nothing--though I did learn that defrosting windshield is a good tool to employ should it be 11 at night and sleeting.
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