The true story of when I ran myself over with my own car.
I ran myself over with my car. I had never felt more like an idiot in my life. I am lucky to be alive, actually. What a dumb way to die.
The morning started just like any other with me being frazzled and running late. I rushed through my morning routine, grabbed my work, and darted out the door. This is the same as any other weekday except on this particular morning, I was on the phone with a friend. She called me at 7:30 am to try and help me with getting my lazy ass out of bed, but we ended up chit chatting as I rushed around.
I hopped in the car, cranked it up, put it in drive, and got off the phone with my friend. Then, I realized, as I was backing up, that I had forgotten my lunch in the house. I jumped out and headed to the house to go get it. I saw the car moving in my peripheral vision.
I turned around and was horrified to see my car backing up out of my driveway with my driver side door hanging open. I raced back to the car, in my heels, and grabbed the edge of the driver’s side door just as the car backed up out of my driveway.
I hung on as the car drug me across the street and into the neighbor’s yard before finally coming to a stop against the tree between my car and the neighbor’s house.
Luckily, the tree stopped serious damage, or worse, to myself and anything else.
The pain was not instant. It seemed to be on a twenty second delay. It came with an intensity that almost knocked me on my back again. Lunging, burning pain in my ankles, knees, and back. Blood pooled up on my knees and my ankles started swelling. I started mentally berating myself for not letting go of the car.
Then I started laughing. Then, just as suddenly, I stopped laughing. That was the moment I realized all of my neighbors had caught this on their cameras.
Some would call me an accident. And by some, I mean my mother. In full disclosure though, she always said I was the best accident that she’s ever had.
My sister was 15 when I was born and my brother was 13. So I didn’t have very many years with them around before they flew from the nest with little thought to the foundling left behind. Which could be the main reason why we never learned to hate each other.
Growing up, my brother was definitely my biggest ally and caretaker. He would pull me around in a box, which in hindsight is not that great. But apparently, I loved it back then. It’s not as fun when you’re 42, though. My sister didn’t spend much time with me when I was very young because she was a social butterfly and the queen bee of our little town.
My brother married the love of his life shortly after leaving for college. He excelled in his career and still is the best husband I’ve ever seen up close. He dotes on his family. He has continuously educated himself and moved up in every aspect of his life. I am only now just beginning to understand how important it is to keep growing and learning as a person.
My sister became my best friend when I was a little older. As a teenager, I thought the sun rose and set on her. She was my hero for many years.
As adults, we have both been prone to impulsiveness and bad decisions. We both love to prank people and can be somewhat obnoxious at times. There have been many moments in my adulthood that I wouldn’t have made it through, if she hadn’t been my ally. For the most part, we are always there for each other when we need each other.
There is not another man, other than my husband, that I respect more than my brother. If more men were as good at being a husband as he always has been, this world’s divorce rate would plummet. There is not another person on this planet that can make me laugh as much as my sister can.
I don’t want to make any of this go to their heads, because it will. And my sister cannot afford that at all. I just wanted to take a moment to praise them, because all I hear about from my kids how much they hate each other. Not all of them do that, but most of them do. And if they don’t say it, it is very evident in their actions.
I know they love each other, because when any one of them is sick they will ask about the ill one behind closed doors. I guess it would be considered a sign of weakness to them, if they thought anyone knew they really cared.
I pray that they will grow out of this feeling. Other parents have assured me that they will, but I never have had ill feelings towards my siblings so I wouldn’t know about that.
I would love to post a picture of my brother and sister, but one of them is immensely private. I don’t feel right about posting one and not the other. However, I will post their Social Security numbers. Kidding…
I would really love to hear about other people’s relationships with their siblings. I would especially love to hear about siblings that grew up not liking each other, but ended up becoming really close as adults.
In this life we will never truly be apart, for we grew to the same beat of our mothers heart.
Time is limited when it comes to making sure your teen doesn’t turn into a douchebag.
Canva
We must act now to stop more entitled teenage brats or even worse, grown up douchebags, from being unleashed upon the world! The quota has been fulfilled. There are a multitude of ways to accomplish this, but the following is a list of experiences that I feel every teenager should experience, for his or her own benefit.
Volunteer
We need to make them understand, aka show them repeatedly and mention it non-stop, that there are people in the world that don’t have it as good as they do. We need to teach them how to give instead of take all the time. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the fruits of your labor, but you should also continually strive to help others.
Whether they are helping at the animal shelter or handing out food to the homeless, they need to understand the act of giving is so much more rewarding than just receiving all the time. This understanding can be life changing as a person. Live your life with a servant’s heart and you will never be poor.
Save
Teenagers and young adults should be taught early to save 25% of their income. I know that seems like a lot, but when they don’t have any outside, or aka real, expenses that is a doable figure. Then, when they do eventually move out and pay their own way, they will have to go down from 25% and, hopefully, they will stay around the 10 to 15% range. If they move out. Wink wink.
Healthcare
Having volunteered at a hospital, rehab center, or retirement home. How many teenagers will lose at least one friend in high school due to an accident or car wreck. But they need to understand the fragility of life. They need to treat life with appreciation and understand just one stupid decision can make it end very quickly. The life changing consequences of one bad decision can haunt them forever.
I am a firm believer that teenagers should have to pay their own phone bill at a minimum, if not all of their bills. They use their phone for everything, including getting in trouble. It’s also good experience to know what paying a bill feels like and to know the feeling of that reoccurring pressure that they will soon be getting all too familiar with. Then you can just tell them to multiply that by 50. Don’t worry, you cannot make your child too responsible.
Sugar Baby
When I was in high school, I took a home economics class. I learned how to sew, cook a casserole, and balance a checkbook. Of course, if I was allowed to give a review, I would take off some points for not learning about credit scores and debt. But, that’s neither here nor there. By the way, if you put a review on the high school website they will take it off.
Again, I digress. The absolute most impressive thing that they did during this class was to make us care for a 5 pound bag of sugar as if it were a baby. You had to take constant care of it, or get a babysitter and log that, and wake up every two hours to “feed” and change it. And, yes, we had to keep a genuine cloth diaper that was laundered on it. I assume that a disposable diaper was also an option, but not for me. This was extremely aggravating and an accurate display of parenting. It was a genius move that got thrown away sometimes after my experience, but before my own children could benefit.There is no telling how many grandchildren are not being raised by grandparents due to this. I describe that as life changing.
Those items above are what I consider a few good ideas to instill some rapidly dying values into our youth. What are your best parenting tips?
It is 6:46 pm on December 23 and I am still at my office, which is located roughly thirty minutes from my house. I stopped working at five. But I am so far behind in my Christmas shopping this year, that I have to begin most of my shopping tonight. As I look at my children’s Christmas lists and add things to carts online, I am reflecting back on what has to be one of the worst years of my life. However, instead of dwelling on that, I have decided to write about all the blessings I experienced instead.
Primarily, I got married to the most amazing husband who is pictured in the picture above. My kids and I love him more than words could ever articulate. He is the family that I have spent my entire life chasing. I won’t deny that when my wedding venue got cancelled on the eve of my wedding and then my honeymoon got cancelled the day of my wedding, I started to panic a little. That was all Covid’s doing, though. We figured it out and the wedding was even better than anticipated.
We have weathered the many, many trials 2020 has sent us together and the heavy stress has caused us to bend at times. But we didn’t break. And now, we are all stronger as a family. We may be chaotic and filled with one catastrophe after another but, as long as we stick together, we always come out of the other side stronger and more resilient. And, most importantly, grateful for every blessing we get.
Thank you to everyone that has followed my blog, sent me support and guidance, or just read my articles. I write this primarily for my own therapy. This blog has been another blessing that I cannot discount.
Merry Christmas to everyone, or Happy Holidays, or thank you. Every like, read, and comment was more support than I expected and it is very much appreciated. I sincerely hope that 2021 will be a different year for all of us, hopefully better, than 2020. If it is not, I will still find many blessings to count.
Some people leave your life just as suddenly as they came and leave behind a person that is forever changed from having known them just for a little while. I don’t believe in fate, but I do believe that we are able to fall in love over and over again. There is not just one person out there for us. This fated soul mate does exist, but it is found within many not just one.
My mother told me that it is common to have three great loves, but I’ve seen first hand that some people have twenty or more. I’ve seen profile pictures changed more than underwear for certain people. These people go straight from the nice to meet you stage to the stage five clinger in one point two seconds.
Photo by Nick Fewings Via Unsplash
I, myself, have loved a thousand souls in a million ways. From friends, family, and animals to strangers than have helped me unexpectedly, all of these encounters made me who I am today.
I will never forget the man who stopped and fixed my flat tire for me on the interstate while everyone else just drove past. The person I never met that donated the marrow, which saved my stepfather from death, is forever a shadowy but real person in my heart.
Some will remain a memory that comes back to haunt me forever. Being stuck in the past in not a good route to take. I try to be thankful for my experiences without ignoring my present moment to live in my past. I enjoy thinking back on my past, but I don’t want to live there.
Some people you will love quietly and from a distance for many years. Others you’ll love out loud. Some will never be returned or acknowledged.
Men in particular have a hard time letting go of the past. But while in a relationship they will do everything except appreciate the one in front of them. Once they’re gone, they will spend years regretting the loss. Women are the opposite. When they are in love, they will do any and everything for somebody. Once they have exhausted all efforts and leave, they are done and there will be no looking back.
Love the one you’re with. They, alone, deserve it. Let the others stay dormant where they lay.
Picking on people comes naturally to me. My father was the king of humor, pranks, and shenanigans. Nobody was spared. I grew up never knowing if anything he said was to be taken seriously and respected or if I was in danger of mortal embarrassment.
Injuries were also known to happen as a result of his pranks. I, myself, was traumatized a few times and I know I was not alone. Yet, despite the pranks that failed, his humor has been the theme of his memory since his death. I have not heard many, if any, anecdotes that did not center around some joke he played on someone.
In his memory, I would like to put these pranks in writing. At least the ones that caused the most laughter and/or trauma. Has a dent in the world was not huge to all, but it was to me.
Snipe Hunting
This prank was not only done by him, but was and is used widely in the south. In particular, it is used on city people or people that aren’t familiar with hunting or wildlife.
He would invite and hype up some new recruit to go snipe hunting. They would wake up at 6 am and dress up all in camouflage. Outfitted with black paint all over their face and twigs in their hair, they would all tote a canvas or burlap bag and a stick into the darkness. Dad would drop the newbie off at “his tree” with some convoluted instructions on how to trap and kill said snipe. Seeing as how snipe doesn’t exist, the newbie would be left by the tree for hours while the rest went back to bed.
This was widely considered to be the unofficial initiation into our family for a long time.
Funeral Home
For as long as I can remember, my father worked at funeral homes. He would collect the dead during all hours, prepare cadavers, set up funerals, and many other things that go into the business of death.
As a child, I would have to go with him in the middle of the night often to collect the bodies. At first, I was terrified and he played upon that a great deal. But, he taught me invaluable advice which was not to be scared of the dead. It’s the living that hurt you.
The staff at the funeral home were very professional and were good at what they did. They were caring towards the bereaved and respectful at all times. When the home was empty and free of any services though, they brought the morale from depressing to fun in a variety of ways.
At my father’s funeral, the staff told stories about the number of new employees they had lost due to my father hiding in the storage trays, for the dead, during the new employee’s tour of the new workplace. When said employee got close, the tour guide would pull out the tray that my father was hiding in and my father would jump up and scare the ever loving shit out of them. It was priceless, but also traumatic.
That phrase, priceless, but traumatic, explains my father and my childhood to a tee.
Roof
In today’s times, this would have landed my father in jail, but the eighties were a different time with different rules. He loved to hoist me up onto the roof of my grandmother’s mobile home. After encouraging me to carefully look around, he would disappear. I would be stuck on the roof from minutes to, what felt like, hours.
Personally, I didn’t enjoy this as much as he did.
Turtle
One of his other pranks got him in trouble with my grandmother. I was around seven years old and taking a bubble bath in her garden tub which was the epitome of luxury back then. My dad came in to check on me and pulls a turtle out from behind his back. I was terrified of turtles because my dad liked to talk about snapping turtles very frequently. He said that if you were bitten by one, you had to wait for lightning before you could get it off.
Of course, in my child’s mind, I immediately was imagining how tough my life would be with a turtle dangling from my finger for months on end.
So as any terrified child would do I jumped out of the tub and immediately fell and smashed a hole in the sheet rock with my elbow. Which caused my grandmother to get mad at him because ruining her house is taking it too far. Apparently my sanity was fair game.
It’s been 12 years since his death and I miss his sense of humor more than anything no matter how traumatic it may have been at the time. I have inherited his ability to take life with a grain of salt. He and I both use humor and you to get through anything that life throws our way.
I look forward to seeing him again one day and I take comfort in knowing that my sister is up there in heaven with him now keeping him company. And, no, I don’t have any doubts that he made it there.
Some of these might explain my weirdness. My mom is not off the hook for that though, as she was also a factor in my personality.
Processing…
Success! You're on the list.
Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.
Kylie’s Rants 