Photo Credit: Bennylin0724

Some stories are just better in the first person. The version told from the perspective of its star is much more intimate and sympathetic than anything a mere witness could express. Trust me, if I knew who either of the people in the following scene were, I'd ask one of them to tell you what happened themselves. I was just one of 30 or so school kids on a bus.... all watching someone's future "most embarrassing moment" story unfold.

I was in middle-school at the time, in a town small enough that some roads weren't paved. Morning and afternoon, the bus I rode made a one mile journey down a dead-end dirt road to pick up two kids. Then we'd do a three-point turn at the end, and make our way back to the main highway.

One afternoon there was a delay. We kids might not have noticed if it weren't for all the honking. But there was really nothing else the bus driver could do. We'd gotten to the end, only wide enough for our turn-around, and had encountered a car. It was parked, but not empty — That much was obvious by the legs coming out of the passenger side window.

Two heads appeared in the back window, and then one disappeared. With an audience of wolf-whistling preteens, one of them climbed into the driver's seat and frantically started the car. But they were trapped at a dead end too. We watched the car, probably operated by a band new driver, do a sixteen-point turn in order to face the only way out. The shirtless driver slumped in his seat with head lowered and shoulders raised. He gunned it back toward the highway, leaving dust and raucous children in his wake.

It's too bad I have to be the one to tell this story — It would be so much better from the point of view of one of its stars. Wherever they are, I hope they can laugh now. They're certainly not alone. Even if not this embarrassing, we all have memories that make us cringe. Somewhere, someone was a witness, and they're making others laugh on our behalf. So lighten up about your past transgressions, because regret is just a long, unpaved dead end.

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