I present to you two stories; one which is fake, and one a real life event that happened to me. It is up to you to decide which is real and which is not. Leave a comment to tell us which one you think is real!
Story A
I don’t remember what day it was, but I remember I was five years old, and had just finished up a day at kindergarten. I went out of my classroom and didn’t see my mom in the front of the school, where she usually was at. I didn’t see her car either, and it wasn’t long until came to the (inaccurate) conclusion that she wasn’t going to pick me up. It was then that I noticed the yellow school bus pull up to the parking lot. I never took the bus, but I had seen my friends taking it. In my toddler perspective, I decided that since I knew the bus took my friends home, the bus would take me home as well. As soon as the thought entered my mind, I hopped on the bus and headed to what I thought was home. I was wrong, and the bus did not even take me to my neighborhood. I was going to tell the bus driver where I lived, but in the rush of little kids scrambling to get on the bus, I didn’t get a chance. I was scared when I realized the bus was taking me on streets I was not familiar with, so I asked a girl next to me where the bus was going.
“Does this bus go to Maple way?”
“Como te llamas?” she replied
To this day, I still have trouble responding in Spanish, so I told her my name and tried to explain that I was lost. She told me to get off at her stop and we could go to her house. We stopped in front of her apartment complex, and we went to her apt, where she told her mom in Spanish that I was lost. Luckily, my mom had taught me to memorize my home address and phone number. For some reason, it was the girl’s mother that called my house and not me. I remember while waiting for someone to pick me up, we played tag and watched cartoons. When it was time for me to leave, I went to the front door and was surprised to see it wasn’t my parents or my grandparents. It was a police officer! I wasn’t sure why a cop picked me up, but it was the one and only time I rode in a police car, and I was excited. We pulled up to an empty bank parking lot, and I noticed my mom was there, and she was crying. I ran out of the cop car and gave her a hug. I asked her why she was crying, and didn’t realize I was “missing” for about four hours!
My mom was only five minutes late in picking me up from school, and according to her, she reminded me before and on the way to school that she would be late, and I should stay where I usually waited for her. She was frightened when she didn’t see me in front of the school, and went into my classroom to ask for me. The teacher didn’t know, but had seen me in front of the school, and assumed my mom had already picked me up. My mom was upset, until one of my classmates told her that they had seen me get on the bus. From there, and from the phone call the girl’s mother made, they were able to find me.
Everything turned out fine, but my mom pulled me out of that school since she was upset that they didn’t notice where I went.
Story B
It was on a weekend, before the end of seventh grade. I was hanging out with a large group of friends, at least seven people. The only friends I specifically remember were Lizette and Gabe. We were messing around, hanging out in the parking lot of the SaveMart near my house. We had just gotten some snacks, and we started to use a shopping cart to take turns doing donuts in the parking lot. As we were doing this, Gabe announced to everyone that he thought it would be “crazy” to push the cart across the street, with one of us in it.
“C’mon, none of you want to do it?”
“Dude, you’re crazy, I don’t wanna die” I replied
“Whatever, I knew you wouldn’t do it. Let’s rock paper scissors for it”
I was a bit off put that he assumed I wasn’t daring enough, but I still didn’t volunteer for it. Lizette was the first one to be carted off across the street. The street itself was only a two-lane, but there tended to be a lot of traffic on Saturdays, along with cars turning in to the grocery parking lot in the same spot we had decided to cross. So we followed Gabe and Lizette as they endeavored across the road. Despite Lizette screaming her head off, they were able to cross without any problems. The rest of us crossed the road, and Gabe asked who would be next. Due to his comment on my inability to do something daring, I decided to go next.
I remember him (and probably some other people) saying, “No way, you’re not gonna do it!”
“Yea I will. Watch.” I then hopped into the shopping cart and waited to be carted across the street. At first, Gabe didn’t move.
So, again I yelled, “Come on, let’s go let’s do this!”
“Alright alright chill. Let’s do it then.”
At first I felt a rush of excitement, as I felt the wheels turning and the cart picking up speed. Then, out of nowhere, I saw a car that looked like it was set to collide on the middle of my path. I yelled at Gabe to stop, but my cart kept going. I looked behind me, and saw that Gabe was running a couple of steps behind, trying to grab hold of the cart. It was then I realized there wouldn’t be enough time to jump out of the cart if the car actually hit me. In that moment, I heard the car’s tires screech, but it did not stop in time. It hit my cart, but luckily not head on. The car’s passenger side of the bumper hit the edge of my shopping cart. Although the car was attempting to stop, the impact was strong enough to send my cart straight into the curb, where it tipped sideways. I ended up falling out of the cart an onto the curb as well, and somehow managed to get to the sidewalk. I remember everyone came running across the street to see if I was okay.
I think it was Lizette that got to me first and asked if I was okay. Then she looked at my pants. Her eyes widened and I looked down, and realized there was a fresh blood stain on my pants. I don’t know where the blood came from, since when I did go into the bathroom, I didn’t see any cuts or scrapes in that area . I was able to clean it up and I went back outside. I told everyone I was gonna walk home, since I didn’t live too far. Gabe apologized but I told him not to worry about it . I remember walking home about half an hour later, glad I didn’t die, and still a bit weirded out by the blood stain.