The Mailbox.

It was sometime during the winter of of 2002, near the beginning of the year. The day before I was talking to my buddy Corey about getting a ride into school in the morning since we both had basketball practice after school and he was my ride home from that anyway. So the next morning I get up and got ready and walked down to his place and he mentioned that he was picking up another guy too, Pat, so he would not have to take his hockey equipment on the bus. A few minutes later we pick Pat up and and start heading off to school, which is about a fifteen to twenty minute drive away in another town. The roads out in the country that day were not all that bad apart from there were sections that were completely covered in snow while other sections were bare. We were about seven or eight minutes away from our destination and just coming off of one of those snow covered sections when the back of the car started fish tailing. Corey's doing his best to get the car back in control while I am sitting in the front passenger seat noticing that there is a nice big transport truck coming down the road in the other direction. The car is still skidding back and forth and Corey is not having any luck getting it back on track while that lovely transport is still coming at us and of course, as the transport was coming up to us in the other lane the back end started skidding out into that lane. We came within a few feet from getting hit by that truck but thankfully Corey cranked on the wheel and sent the back end of the car the other way where it crashed right into a mailbox. The rear passenger door window on my side shattered everywhere, or well mostly into Pat who was luckily sitting behind drivers seat. After getting the car under control, Corey pulled over and we all made sure we were all ok, and took a quick glance at the damage done. Huge pole shaped dent by the way.



We got to school and in the parking lot we took a better look at the damage, the car hit right on the rear wheel, with a dent not only in the quarter panel, and the frame but also the tire.
In case you are unaware of this, it takes quite a bit of a force to dent a wheel like that.
We were all fine, not a scratch, understandably though we were a little shook up about it but otherwise perfectly fine. I get into my first period class, did not talk about what happened with anybody but sat there and listened to the teacher who coincidentally enough talked about car crashes. I was less then excited about that. My next class was Physics, were of course when you are dealing with speed and acceleration, cars always come up as examples. Not that it bothered me, it was just odd how two classes in a row were talking about speeding cars and then later on I went to my third class, which was Economics and my teacher for that was an odd person. For some reason he started talking about speeding cars and jumping up on the curb to run people over in some sort of example for whatever. I honestly was not paying attention to what he was actually talking about before he started on rampage sidewalks with a car. Luckily lunch was next and my last class of the day was uneventful.

Basketball practice was fun, but Corey and I had to leave early to go find the mailbox that we thought we would have destroyed upon impact with the car. We got to the spot where we thought we had hit the mailbox and there was still a mailbox there relatively unscathed, which confused as a little since we figured there would have been more damage done. Anyway, we go up to the guys house and Corey goes and talks to owner apologizing for hitting his mailbox and yada yada. The guy tells Corey that he did not even notice, and that apparently his post is a steel post buried six feet into the ground. No wonder there was not any damage done to the mailbox.

And thus concludes the first time Corey's driving as instrumental in preventing me to be apart of a serious automobile collision.