It was a chilly fall night, October I think. Clarkston had just won their football game to take them to the state playoffs. My stepbrother, my foreign exchange student from Germany, my friend and his brother Jacob all piled into Jacob’s car. He had a 2003 Saturn Ion. The car had over 100,000 miles on it and looked like it had seen a lot. The black paint on the hood and rims were peeling off, the interior carpet was all torn up and stained almost like a big muddy dog was in the car and was biting and shredding the seats and floormats. I sat in the front seat next to Jacob while everyone else got in the back seat. Driving back to Jacob's house we were having a good time and I’d say that overall, it was a pretty good night.

We had the windows down and the music up. Jacob jerked the wheel to the right and scared all of us in the car but then we all laughed and laughed. He continued to move the wheel with a quick left then right as we drove down the road with us all laughing and slamming into each other and the doors and windows of his car. During the chaos I looked over at his speedometer and noticed that our speed was climbing higher and higher. He jerked the wheel to the left and we made a ninety degree turn into a ditch that was cluttered with small trees and bushes. All I could think was “We’re gonna flip. We're gonna flip and all of us are going to die.” None of which happened. We all got out of the car with no injuries.

Everyone is looking at the car trying to figure out how much damage we caused to the car and what our story was going to be to Jacob’s mom about what happened to the car. We had gotten our story straight finally after a half hour of standing outside in the freezing cold. We were going to tell his mom that a deer ran out in front of the car and we had to swerve to avoid it. We all agreed with the lie and we began to devise a plan to push the car out of the trees. I got in the driver's seat because I was the smallest so I really couldn't do much to help.

“On the count of three,” Jacob said. “1...2...3!”

They all push, I hit the gas, but the car didn't budge. We analyzed the car again and saw that under the car there was a wire fence with branches in it keeping us from going back up to the road. We tried to clear all the branches out from under the car but had little success doing so. We flag down a passing car for help and we devised a new plan. I was going to stand on the right side of the fence and the man that pulled over to help was going to stand on the left, my stepbrother was going to hit the gas, and everyone else had to push.

”On  the count of three,” Jacob said again with lots of confidence. “1...2...3!”

The car comes flying up the hill and we were finally out. We thanked the man who helped us and gave him twenty dollars which wasn’t really much considering how much time he took from his night to help five strangers. On the way back to his house I began thinking about what all had happened that night and I had realized that what had just happened could have gone way worse then what happened. The car could have flipped and all of us could be dead right now. But it didn't, we got lucky. We got back to Jacob’s house with no more incidents thankfully. We told his mom are lie about how we swerved from a deer but that we were all okay. I got my license five months after our accident but I still could remember it clear as day. I told myself that I would never drive like that ever. I've had my license for about eight months now with no tickets, no warnings, and no accidents and I plan to keep it that way.