“A yelp came from her mouth, as the car swerved out of her way, brushing her side as it passed.” Last year, in August, a horrific accident almost happened. My friend Rachel and I decided to go walk to Pieology, a pizza restaurant by my house, and then after that we would walk to the pet store.

Once we were done eating our scrumptious pizza; we started our long, tedious, journey to the pet store.  It was quite hot that day. The sun was beating down on us. We had the thought of turning back, but we were already too far. We tried to get our minds off the sun, but it was burning outside. I felt like my skin was going to catch on fire. We trudged on trying not to think about the heat.

The walk felt like it would never end, but we could finally see the khaki paint, and the evergreen sign. It was only a couple blocks away, until air conditioning. We crossed the first sidewalk unprepared on what was going to happen next. A car started to turn, not noticing Rachel and I walking across the street. The car started to merge out farther and closer to us. We thought we were gonners. We tried to dodge the car, but it seemed like there was no escaping it. The man paid no attention to us, but only to his broken air conditioning. As Rachel was trying to avoid getting smashed, like a bug on a windshield, she lost my birkenstock, and it was now under the car’s wheel.  The car kept coming at us, and at the last second Rachel let out a loud yelp and he looked up. He swerved out of the way and stepped on the breaks and with a screech the car was finally at a stop. The man, with a terrorized face, looked up. The man apologized and was sympathetic. He drove away, and we retrieved my birkenstock, not damaged, but it had a black imprint of the wheel, going from one side to the other side of the shoe.  As we walked on, we talked about what if Rachel did not scream, we would have been most likely be dead or badly injured. We babbled on about what would people do if we died. Would they be sad? Would they cry? Would they cancel school? We laughed about the thought of them cancelling school. We knew that we were not that important. We gossiped on, and soon we reached the pet store.

I learned from this experience to always pay attention to your surroundings, and while driving it is better to wait until home, or at your destination to fix something or text. It is best to do this so you can pay attention to the road and that so you do not hit a pedestrian, or another car.