On Thanksgiving Day of my sophomore year, approximately 51 days after I received my driver’s licence, I hit a deer while driving home with my younger brother and dog. Honestly, I just wanted to get home. It was a very long day, and we were driving home from the nursing home where my mom worked. Jon, who was 12 at the time, was jamming with me to See You Tonight by Scotty McCreery. I was only driving 50 miles per hour, five under the speed limit, something unheard of by a teenager. My parents always preached to me about looking out for deer, and I actually thought about that throughout the drive home. But home was so, so close. What could go wrong? I was scanning the ditch on my right when Jon’s yelling caught my attention.

“Emily! DEER!” he screamed. “AHHH!”

I whipped my head around only to see an eight-point buck sprinting toward our Malibu. Automatically, I slammed on the brakes. The car stopped just as we made impact with the whitetail. A flash of tan and white flew across the windshield and scurried off into the field.
I stared at the wheel between my hands. That’s when the panic set in. I looked over to my right. Jon and Sophie were still in the seat next me. Thank you, thank you. After I realized they were okay, the screams spilled out of my mouth. Did this really just happen?

I pushed the handle to the car door and pushed, but to no avail. I was trapped. This only added to my hysteria. Shrieking, I flung myself into the back seat and tried the back door. Success! Once my feet touched the pavement, I sprinted to the front of the car. A vicious looking dent sculpted itself into the nose of my former ticket to freedom. Coarse hair was wedged into the shattered headlight and cracked bodywork. Hissing from under the hood infringed on the stillness of the night. My car was as good as done.
After I finally stopped screaming long enough to think, I called my mom.

“Emily, Emily calm down,” she coaxed. “It’s okay. Is anyone hurt? How’s Soph and Jon? No one’s injured, right?”

“Um…No. We are all okay,” I sobbed, my body shaking. “But, Mom, I’m so sorry. How much is this gonna cost?” For some reason, the price of the accident and my parents’ disappointment in me was all I could think about. Sophie’s frightened barking didn't help my nerves, either.

“Emily, you’re fine. The cost doesn't matter. I’m going to call Grandpa, okay? I’ll try to get off work as soon as I can. It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Lead-filled minutes following the phone call transpired until my grandpa and mom finally came. We were able to drive the car back to the garage, and I eventually stopped crying. Laying in bed that night, I kept thinking about how fragile life actually is, and how random things are. If we would've left 30 seconds earlier or later, the incident never would've happened. A second later, and the deer would've rammed right into the driver-side door, and I could have been severely injured, or worse. Close proximity is a false blanket of security; anything can happen at any given moment in time, no matter where I am.

What I can’t do, however, is live my life in fear. Sure, I slow down to 30 every time I pass that field, but I don’t let that incident dictate where I go or how I get there.