"Monday Morning" by Kaj M

      Monday morning of August 22, 2016, only two weeks after starting my first day of
highschool. I opened my eyes to the opening ringtone of my 5:30 a.m. alarm and immediately silenced it because I thought I could take a quick power nap before my real alarm went off. I told myself, “just a couple more minutes wouldn’t hurt” as I shut my eyes again to sleep. What felt like just a couple seconds before I opened my eyes again to check my phone was actually an hour. I slept through three more alarms, my 5:45a.m. to warn me that my real alarm is coming up, my real alarm at 6:00a.m. and my emergency 6:15a.m. alarm just in case I didn’t wake up to the other three. It was already 6:30 when I rushed out of bed to pick out my outfit for the day and set it on my desk. I then headed to the shower to hopefully start my day feeling refreshed and clean. I got out of the shower 10 minutes before 7:00, brushed my teeth, got dressed and managed to finish at about 7:00.
     I rushed into my parents room to wake up my dad and tell him it was just about time to take me to school because my dad was usually the one to give me rides to school in the mornings. However, this morning he told me to ask my older brother if he would take me to school instead because he was feeling too tired and it is never a good idea to drive when you are feeling sleepy. So I did what my dad asked, rushed into my brother's room, woke him up and told

him he had to take me to school today because dad was too tired today. Little did I know, my brother had just got back home at 6:00a.m. from a long night of partying and had only got about an hour of sleep. Since he got home so late, he didn’t want to admit to my dad that he’d been out all night so he agreed to take me to school despite having little to no sleep whatsoever.
     We then got in my brother’s brand new 2016 Honda civic, buckled our seatbelts and started our journey to school. I sat there in my brother's car, plugged my headphones into my headphone jack, opened Spotify, and began listening to music to try and ease my mind and body from the stressful start of my morning. I was scrolling through music to try and find the perfect song on our drive as I often looked up to see how far we were from school. We were on Walnut st. going approximately 40mph while approaching a stop sign at Cherry ave. I assumed we would start slowing down because that is usually what you do when you start approaching a stop sign, so I looked back at my phone to find that song again.
     A couple seconds later, I looked up again and we were closer to this stop sign and still no slowing down but even then I still wasn’t worried because I trusted that my brother would keep us safe. Looking down at my phone once again I began to realize that we should have started slowing down already so I immediately looked up at the road ahead one last time, looked at my brother and saw him with his head down because he had fallen asleep behind the wheel. My heart sank as I began to realize what was about to happen as we approached this oncoming traffic on a busy Monday morning and I braced for impact. Those few seconds before our car hit the other car, were the longest few seconds of my life. Within those few seconds, my entire life flashed before my eyes just like in the movies. Every good memory of my life from the moment I could remember was in the forefront of my mind as I could literally see in slow motion what

was about to happen in front of me. All I remember thinking at that moment was “This is it. It’s over for me”. Then at the very moment that our cars collided, the slow motion stopped, I heard the loudest crash, and then everything went dark. That moment was only a couple seconds long, but it felt like an eternity. I started to come to my senses but my vision was blurry and all I heard was this constant ringing. Once my vision started to clear up, it was blurred again by the smoke that started filling up the car and my lungs which made it hard to breathe. I immediately tried to open my door to get out the car not even thinking that our car was sitting in the middle of a busy street but my door was stuck and I couldn’t get out. I then tried to reach for my phone but my phone had flown across the car and unplugged from my headphones when we crashed. People who had stopped on the side of the road came to help me out the car and told me the police were on their way. The police and ambulance arrived on the scene within a few minutes of me getting out of the car and asked “Are you ok? Do you have any injuries?”. However the adrenaline that coursed through my blood made it so I couldn’t feel the injuries that I had obtained from the crash so I responded “No I think I’m ok”.
     Thankfully me and the other individuals involved in the crash had only minor injuries and all walked out of the accident okay. I thank God everyday for protecting me in what I thought were my final moments. This event gave me a wake up call to realize the importance of life and how fast it can be taken away. I still remember the crash like it was yesterday and now that I drive myself, it has taught me not only to be safe when I drive but to make sure others are safe when they drive as well. To this day I still feel my heart sink into my stomach as I drive past that intersection but I will forever be grateful and blessed to be where I am today and to have been given the opportunity to grow into the person that I am today.