Day 17

There was a day my junior year in high school that I thought for a while, that my life was over.

Seriously.

School lunches were actually pretty good back then, at least at my school.  Even so, a pizza from Pizza Hut always sounded better.  A few of us had developed a habit of hanging out in the coaches’ office during lunch and on this particular day, had talked, begged and pleaded our way into ordering pizza for lunch.

The only issue was going to pick it up.

My friend Sharon and I were selected, but since it was a closed campus (and you had to drive right in front of the school doors and office windows to leave), we had a problem.  Solution?  Coach Kelly says, “Take my car.”

The room fell silent.  Anyone within the city limits knew that no one brushed against, breathed on, or dared touch his car.  It was his baby.  And here he was telling us to DRIVE it???

So with my heart racing 200 bpm, we slowly cruised past the school doors off the campus.  Just after we passed through the gates, I reached up to adjust the rear view mirror… and the whole thing came off in my hand!  Nothing was left on the windshield! My heart stopped along with the car.  We were dead.  Check that: I was dead.

I tucked the mirror into the console and we started scheming.  We went to my house and tried super glue.  No luck.  We went to Sharon’s house and tried epoxy glue.  No luck.  Finally we picked up the pizza and returned to school.

It wasn’t a matter of if I was going to tell Coach Kelly what happened.  It was when.  I knew he was going to kill me.  And I didn’t want my humiliation to be too public.  I couldn’t eat.  He knew something was wrong.  “What took so long?" “Did you wreck my car?” “Why aren’t you eating?”  “Are you sure you didn’t wreck my car?”

Finally we asked him to come outside.  Through my fearful and apologetic tears, I told him about the mirror.  He started laughing.  I wasn’t sure whether to look up at him, or run.  “That old thing?  It’s been coming off for a while now.  I need to get it fixed for good.”

It’s not very often that do I not reach up to adjust my mirror without remembering this story, and how two teenage girls thought that super or epoxy glue might do the trick.  

Some bonds simply require stronger adhesive and attention.