Ok…enough mocking other people’s stupidity. Let’s get back to mocking my own personal brilliance while we’re talking about cars.

For the record, this is a story I have not openly shared. Oh, my parents freely tell this story. But I’ve kept this little embarrassing gem to myself for about 27 yrs.

My high school had a drivers ed program. There were about 20 of us to one instructor (brilliant idea) and enough cars for each student to have one for practicing parking. There was a section of the school parking lot set up to practice parking while instructor watched. Although, I never figured out how he saw anything with his eyes closed.

When it came time to go practice parking, we all grab a set of keys and heading to where the cars were parked. Guess what I got? A Pontiac Bonneville. Yeah, a big ass boat. Oh this is going to be fun.

Naturally, it was the dead of winter and had just snowed. So there was snow and ice around parts of the parking lot.

We all got in our cars, lined up and started our little parking parade. All the spots were set up for pull in parking and marked by orange cones. We drove around in a circle trying each spot. Well one of the spots was set up on a 90 degree left turn and angled incorrectly for pulling in. It the object was to back in, it would have been set up perfectly… But we were only practicing pulling in parking.

I was happily parking along like everyone else until I got to this spot. Now I saw everyone else do the same thing I was about to do… and they all hit the same cone regardless of the car size. So I knew this was going to be a breeze in the yacht. Ha! I, of course, hit the cone. So I put the car in park, got out, trudge through the snow and ice fixed the cone and tried again.

Well, dont you know, your feet become very slippery on the pedals when your shoes are snow packed. I tried to pull the yacht in again and hit the cone again. So I put my foot on the break and….

My foot slipped off the break…

Nailing the gas pedal…

And we are airborne…

Over the small embankment….

Rolling down the hill…

I place my foot on the break again and dont you know…

My foot slips off again…

Nailing the gas pedal again…

To lurch further down the hill into the deeper snow and mud…

Sinking…

YEA ME! I went muddin in drivers ed…

Shoot me now, please shoot me now… is all I can think. I anchor the yacht and desperately try to become invisible. Yeah, that didnt work. The yacht is officially stuck and all my classmates are watching and laughing. Of course, since the yacht was stuck, they didnt quite find it so funny when they had to push the behemoth of a car out so we could get it back up the hill to, ya know, pavement.

I believe I still am the only student at that school to ever take a car airborne and go muddin all on school property in one fell swoop. And I PASSED drivers ed… Top that!