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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, even though I’m from Oklahoma I do not like country music, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share a lesson I learned on my first day of owning a car.
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What I Learned Yesterday:
I grew up in a very middle class home. We didn’t lack for anything we needed, but we didn’t have many extras. I think having 3 teenage boys was tough on my parents. I don’t even want to know what our grocery bill was each month.
I don’t know if it was because we couldn’t afford it, or if my dad wanted to teach me a lesson, but I didn’t get a car for my 16th birthday or high school graduation. If I wanted a car, it was entirely up to me to save up the necessary money and then buy it myself. I know that my parents definitely couldn’t afford to buy me one, so I never felt cheated in any way. But my dad is the kind of guy who appreciates hard work, and even if we could have afforded it, I wouldn’t be surprised if he did make the same decision in order for me to better appreciate the car and responsibility that comes with owning one.
Since we lived in a very small town, there weren’t a lot of job opportunities. Most kids worked on their family farm or other family business. There were a couple of jobs to be found at the local grocery store and a few jobs to be found at the McDonalds out on the turnpike. There were bigger towns nearby that offered more job opportunities, but without a car, those were not feasible options for me.
I applied at the grocery store and at McDonalds. After several months of consistently filling out applications, I finally got hired on as a burger flipper at McDonalds making $4.25/hour. I was 17 years old, it was the most money I’d ever seen, and my dream of owning a car would be a reality soon.
I worked as often as I could throughout my senior year of high school and saved much of what I’d earned. On payday I would ride my bicycle down to the local bank and deposit my check into a savings account. One time I arrived after the lobby had closed and I had to ride my bike through the drive thru to make my deposit. I got laughed at, but I didn’t care too much.
About a month after I graduated I finally had enough saved to get a decent car. My dad and I began looking at the local car ads and we checked out some of the dealerships in the city. We had a hard time finding a car that was dependable, in my price range, and had styling that I could live with. I almost bought a sweet Volkswagen Beetle, but I didn’t have any money on me at the time. When I returned the next day with the money, the car had been sold. I still love VW Beetles.
One day dad came home from work with good news. He had stopped by one of the dealerships in Oklahoma City on his way home and had found a car. A friend of mine and I drove to the city and took a look at it. It was an early 90’s Mazda 323 hatchback. It wasn’t a total babe magnet, but neither was I. It was clean, reliable, in my price range, and seemed like the perfect kind of car to make my own. I signed the paperwork and drove it off the lot.
As you can imagine, I was thrilled. I did a little happy dance as I drove away.
My church was conducting vacation bible school that week and I had volunteered to help along with a couple of other of my friends from the youth group. The next day after I purchased the car, I proudly drove my car to the church. After vacation bible school was over, I offered to take one of my friends home. His name was Caleb. Caleb was a year or two younger than me and he lived about 5 miles outside of town down a dirt road.
I dropped Caleb off at his house and then it hit me. I had the rest of the day to do whatever I wanted. I had a full tank of gas, no pressing responsibilities, and a fresh car at my fingertips. I pointed the car back to town and mashed the accelerator. The moment was perfect in nearly every way. The only thing it lacked was the perfect song and the one on the radio wasn’t it. I scanned channel after channel looking for the perfect song. I don’t know how many songs I skipped through. All I remember is the rumble.
I looked up from the radio to see my car heading off the side of the road. I jerked the steering wheel to get the car back on the road, but my effort was too much. The car was now quickly heading into the ditch on the other side of the road. Again I jerked the wheel and the car responded accordingly. However, I had made the same mistake and used too much force. The car was now careening toward the original ditch and this time there was no escape. I managed to straighten out the car before the passenger side of the car fell victim to the hard sandstone ditch that the road had been carved through.
The car came to a grinding, sliding stop. Dust and Gravel were scattered outside of the car and broken glass now lay scattered across the seat where Caleb had been sitting moments before. The car which had carried me so proudly into the church parking lot earlier that day was now my shame. The sandstone ditch had scraped off layers of paint, plastic moldings, and the side mirror. The front windshield was shattered, the passenger door and fenders were dented in, and it was stuck in the red Oklahoma dirt.
Moments later my boss’s husband drove by. He got out of his pickup and with a friendly small town southern drawl he said, “That’s not a very good parking spot.” He lived nearby so he quickly retrieved a chain and pulled my battered chariot out of the ditch. Fortunately it was still driveable, so I limped her home and parked her in the driveway. My day of freedom was over before it ever even began.
Here’s what I learned.
Pay attention to the road, stupid. It doesn’t matter what song is on the radio of a wrecked up car.
I had taken driver’s ed and had done really well. My dad and my uncle had both taken me out driving and told me about being a defensive driver. I knew all the driving rules and had all their lessons down pat. I had seen other kids from school wreck their cars and knew the types of mistakes they’d made. You know what I didn’t have? Driving experience.
I was overly confident. I was careless. I was immature.
I wish that driver’s ed, tips from my dad, and observing the mistakes of others would have been enough to help me avoid that ditch, but for me, they weren’t.
Looking back on it now 20 years later, I wouldn’t change a thing. Sometimes we all have to learn the hard way and there’s no replacement for first hand experience. I took the driver’s seat much more seriously after that and, knock on wood, that was the last time I was in an accident of my own fault.
And these are the stories of life. Sometimes we learn from observing or by the teachings of others, and sometimes we learn first hand. Whatever the case may be for you right now, my hope is the same for you as it for myself. That the lesson would not only be heard and observed, but also learned. Otherwise we may find ourselves getting pulled out of a ditch with another beat up car.
I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday, I would be grateful if you’d leave a review in iTunes.
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