Ever wonder what it feels like to be leaving school early to go hang out with two great friends, one of which is driving behind you...

and then you hear a slam and look in your rearview mirror...

and that friend's driver side door is completely concave and the mirror has been shattered out?

I never did.  But now I don't have to, because I know.  I'll give you a hint.  It lies somewhere between hysterical panic and complete numbness.

You wouldn't have recognized me if you'd seen me running to the car.  Me, one of the slowest runners in all of JROTC, in my class A uniform, was full on sprinting.  Man, if I could keep that pace for my mile run I'd be done in three minutes.

Upon arriving at the collision site, about 50 yards from where I pulled off the road and jumped out of my car, I realized that Stephanie was not unconcious, bleeding to death, or suffering and immediate medical danger.  Her face was bleeding because of the glass spray from the shattered window, but she was mostly just distressed about the state of her 2003 Sunfire, which has been in her posession a mere two months.

Matt, the guy who t-boned her car as she turned left out of a parking lot, was completely cool about everything.  I was talking to Stephanie about calling an ambulance and he said, "Sarah, use my phone," and tossed it to me through his open windows.  In the end, I wound up calling Kristin, the other friend we were going to be hanging out with [who had left ahead of us] and Matt called the police and paramedics. 

Mandy, who was nearby, went to get an SRO and the school nurse.  Nathan and his dad [neither of whom I'm acquainted with, even though I occasionally see Nathan around school] stopped to help Stephanie and make sure she was okay.  Nathan got out in the middle of Oakland Drive and started directing traffic.  :p

In the end, everything except Stephanie's car was okay.  Her door and probably a front panel are going to need replacing.  Her insurance is going to go up.  And she got a ticket for failure to yield when exiting a parking lot. 

Stephanie herself is okay.  Kristin and I went to my house so I could change clothes (I got glass on my uniform from leaning through Stephanie's window and crawling into her car to get her stuff out.)  Then we went and met Stephanie and her dad at the ER.  They cleaned her face, smothered it with disinfectant, and told her to put neosporin on it every night to keep scarring down.

Whoo.

Wouldn't mind never going through that again.

Oh yeah... and ACI was totally cool.  I made a few mistakes, but I think as a whole we did very well.