The story I am about to share with you is a McGrath Family favorite and one can often hear it being told at any holiday celebration when my Louisiana family gets together. It is usually told as a scary story to frighten my younger cousins into being a safer driver than your cousin, Corinne Marie. No matter how much I protest and tell my mother to back me up (which she does after much badgering), I'm still considered to be the "bad driver" of the McGrath clan. Let me share my side of the story.

It's mid-October, 2011, and I'm a senior at St. Agnes Academy. It was an early Monday morning and I had just gotten back the previous night from touring Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. My mother was already hounding me to make a decision about Belmont, but I was firmly ignoring her because I was a 17 year old girl, and that's just what we do. Anyway, my mother loved Belmont and Nashville and made many proclamations about my inevitable future here. Sitting on the plane ride home, I already knew three things about Belmont: first, it was too cold; second, it was too far away; and third, it was not Baylor and Baylor was home.

Getting back to the Monday morning, I was preparing myself for school and I distinctly remember that I was going to be late. It was 6:30 a.m., and I was going to be late for school. Let that sink in for a moment. The sun had not even risen into the sky and I was late for school. High school, am I right?

So, I dashed out the door, threw myself into my white girl car (a white Rav4 proudly named Tommy), and started the drive to choir. (Yes, I fibbed. My school didn't start at 7:00 a.m., choir practice did whatever.) Finally, I made it out of my neighborhood and got to the main road, Memorial Drive. I had to turn right at a light onto Memorial Drive from the neighborhood. This sounds simple, right? It's the first lesson of driver's ed. I had also driven on Memorial every day of my life and never had a problem before this morning.

I pulled up to the red light, N*SYNC's Tearing at my Heart blaring from Tommy's speakers at an ungodly volume for that early in the morning, and I began the ritual. First, look left, make sure no cars are coming. Then, out of safety, make sure there are NO PEDESTRIANS crossing the sidewalk in front of your car. Finally, look left again and then turn right. It should have been easy with me being the only car in sight on Memorial but no. Not today.

Having completed the ritual, I began to drive, turning right onto Memorial when CRASH, THWACK, SMASH, BANG! Tommy was shaking and I could still somehow hear someone cursing incredibly clearly over Justin Timberlake's once soothing melodies. Naturally, I shrieked in panic because what the fudge just pummeled into the passenger side of Tommy? I strain my eyes against the dark and see-

Oh. My. God. No.

It was a person.

It was a man on a bicycle and he was lying on the ground and not moving and I am so going to jail and oh my god I will never go to Baylor and I won't run the line an-

If I could, I would go back in time and relive that moment so scientists could study my brain, because I think it actually short-circuited and exploded. Smoke was coming from my ears, my face frozen in a horrified expression, yeah, I was definitely going to jail. I was convinced it was manslaughter. But maybe I could get my friends on the mock-trial team to defend me, wouldn’t this be involuntary manslaughter?

At this point, I was standing on the sidewalk about the call 911 when the man sprang up and whipped around like my cat when I sneak up on her. We locked eyes and I know he could see the horror in my face.

"Are you OK!?" I sounded like a harpy, my voice had never been so high-pitched and shrill. In the back of my mind, I realized that the man was dressed in black from head to toe and had earphones dangling from his ears. He had been just as aware of me as I of him. Forcing myself to focus, I saw the man (let's call him Frank) checking himself for injuries, but that didn't compute in my head. No, in my mind, I clearly saw him counting all the bones I had broken.

"Actually, I think I am all right, somehow," Frank stuttered out, he eyed me suspiciously, "why are you driving this early in the morning?"

I was teetering on the edge of hysterics, when suddenly, it became worse.

"I saw what happened!" a voice cried from across the street, "I'm going to call the police!" My head snapped toward this new intruder of my quickly down-spiraling morning.

Frank sighed and called back, "Uh, thanks, sir but I don't think that's necessary." I could see him eying me when he said that. Frank knew that teenage girls are unstable when scared, and I was terrified. Frank was a wise man.

The voice made his physical appearance and joined Frank, Tommy, and I on our side of the road. He looked how his voice had sounded, pompous, holier-than-thou, and a paste-eater (I'm making that last bit up but he was so mean to me. Like, way harsh, Tai.) We'll call him Booger, (because that's what he is) threw back, "Well, she should have looked where she was driving. No, it is my duty as a citizen to call the police and report this accident."

Time slowed down. I could feel my fried brain scrambling to find a logical reason as to why Booger shouldn’t call the police. I remember wracking my mind furiously, searching for even one of my thousands of loopholes. I was the daughter of two lawyers, I had to be able to talk my way out of going to jail! That's when it hit me. I was most definitely going to jail. There was no way out. I was done. Cut down in the prime of my life all because of one mistake. I vowed never to drive again and I could feel myself falling into an abyss of hysterics. I was getting ready to start forming my defense case when I remembered, I should call my mom.

My head snapped towards Booger, his pudgy fingers so close to sealing my fate in prison and I screeched with the force of ten thousand howler monkeys, "YOU WILL NOT DO ANYTHING UNTIL MY MOTHER GETS HERE." Both of the men stared at me, like I had snorted mashed potatoes out of my nose (confused and disgusted, in case you were wondering). Booger's floppy jowls swung open but I wheeled at him and screeched, "I AM ONLY 17 YEARS OLD. I AM A MINOR. I WILL DO NOTHING AND YOU WILL DO NOTHING UNTIL MY MOTHER ARRIVES."

Silence fell. I had driven the birds away with my howler monkey voice. I quickly called my mother and begged her to drive as fast as she could and help me because I had no idea what I was doing. I hung up and unsure of what else to do I inspected Tommy. The passenger side mirror was hanging by a wire and the door had a dent the size of small dog. All at once, the stress of the situation was too much and tears began to rise in my eyes and my throat began to constrict from the effort of holding back my tears in front of these strangers.

But of course, it didn't work, and I began to cry quietly, trying to muffle my panic-induced blubbering as much as I could but Frank and Booger noticed. Their facial expressions went from exasperated-with-this-loud-mouth-girl to sheer panic and horror. I realized that they clearly had no idea what to do when a girl started crying, and as if to prove my point, the pair snapped at me simultaneously, "Don't cry!"

That was the final straw. I started sobbing through my sweater sleeves (I was trying to hide as much as possible from these horrible strangers. Frank had turned out to not be very wise.) I saw my mother's huge, green Land Cruiser pull up next to us. I turned to Frank and Booger, took a deep breath, and told them with as much dignity as I could muster, "You should never tell someone on the verge of tears not to cry, it only makes things worse."

After that, I don't remember a whole lot other than my mother taking Frank to the nearby 24-hour Medical Emergency Center while I drove home with the right mirror in my lap (the wire holding it didn’t last). I went to school late and I didn't tell anyone what had happened until a week later. Frank never pressed charges, and Booger went back to the fiery bowels of hell from whence he came (I didn’t make that part up. He was really an agent of the devil).

Moral(s) of the story:

1st: Don't let a situation stress you out so much that you become a howler monkey.

2nd: Don't bike around in all black at 6:30 a.m. in the morning.

3rd: Don't be a Booger. Ask if you can help instead of threatening to call the police.