Have you ever done something on impulse and ended up regretting it later? I’ve certainly done that before. There is a saying, “think before you speak,” which ends up important for any situation. Because I didn’t think something through, I ended up embarrassing myself and others.

How had I even got into this situation in the first place? How had I agreed to this without a second thought? Yet here I was, simply observing as cars approached from all directions, people honking and hollering in confusion, two of my friends hurriedly trying to cross the road without being absolutely obliterated by cars. Yeah, all I wanted to do was restart the day over again without agreeing to this absolutely bonkers bike ride.

It all started on a languid August afternoon. I was traversing a creek with two of my close friends at the time, Amanda and Adele. Well.... it was more like they were. Knelt on a large coarse rock, I attempted to fling a shiny pebble to the other side of the creek.  I observed the pebble soar through the air and then promptly land smack-dab in the middle of the creek with a plop.  I tried again.  My mind started to wander. By the time I had flung the most-likely thirteenth pebble onto the other side of the creek, I felt a knock on my shoulder. Turns out that while I was distracted Amanda and Adele decided they were going to try and bike to a tea shop -- on a main road. They were also apparently bringing Adele’s little sister, Irene. Alarm bells started ringing in my head at the thought. I should have known better considering I’ve only biked on main roads with my mom. They did say that we would take back roads that were safe.  But I had to lend my bike to my sister in 40 minutes, and I had a reunion with my friends from elementary school too. Yet I shoved those thoughts aside for the sake of why not?

Even before we got to the intersection everything had started to go downhill. We managed to get out of our neighborhood and passed the gas station before we met our first hiccup. After 20 minutes of riding through countless neighborhoods that took us nowhere, Amanda realized that the GPS we were using wasn’t all that accurate. We based the time it would take us to get there by car distance! Then we realized that it was already two fifty-six --holy moly. I had to get my bike back to my sister in fifteen minutes, my goodness!  We realized that it was entirely impossible to make it to the tea shop altogether.  We had to make a decision: do we continue to persevere through this ultimately meaningless journey or just go home? We decided on the latter. Now even as comedic as I make this sound,  I was actually exhausted to the point where I literally didn’t care anymore. I just wanted to go home and never think of this again. If only I had known it would get so much worse.

Back to where we are now. Completely ignoring Irene's rising panic, Amanda wiped a bead off her chin and looked both ways before whispering in Irene’s ear to go. Then with an indescribable look on her face, she hightailed it out of there with Irene in-tow. Taking Amanda's example, Adele peddled her bike faster than I’d ever witnessed before, shouted at me to come with her and took off. I was feeling so many emotions at that point in time I didn’t know what else to do, so I skedaddled along with them.

Once we had gotten back to the safety of our neighborhood I took a moment to collect my bearings. Honestly, the only thing I could think was that I was so done. Just by making one decision my delightful morning and early afternoon had figuratively crashed and burned. Everyone was silent now. The only noise heard being the pitiful squeaks of my bike, who seemed equally as exhausted as I was, and the occasional  skittering of rocks.

“Well, that didn’t go so well.” With one sentence, the tense silence spell broke and everyone started…. laughing? I didn’t get why they were so happy all of a sudden. I was still extremely embarrassed and had assumed they were too. Everyone started chatting, but I was too frazzled to even get a word out. They proposed that we should go again, and that’s when I started fuming. Now, I consider myself a generally calm person; that was crossing the line though. I scavenged my brain for some semblance of a reason why? How they could have possibly wanted to go through what felt like utter torture to me? I kept my thoughts to myself, but I could feel all of my anger and bewilderment festering together inside me, waiting to be released.

I calmed down once I got home, but I was much more frustrated with myself and the circumstances than I am with them now. I shouldn't have gone along with their idea. I mean, we were twelve for goodness sake! We were way too young to go on adventures like that in the first place. Yet I know I can’t change the past, but at least I now know when not to go along with an idea with which I don’t agree. Hopefully you can learn from my experience. When making any decision, you should always think it through and not go along with something unless you actually agree with it.

 

 

-Hannah