Finding the Humor in Life by Julia

Finding the Humor in Life by Julia - February 2018 Scholarship Essay

I had dreamed for years of getting my driver's license and counted down the days until my license test, but I never imagined that my last road lesson would end quite the way it did, with me waiting in the back of a police car and my instructor in an ambulance. If I was told this outcome by a fortune teller, I would have predicted many tears and not an ounce of humor.
Last year on a rainy day in mid-November, I was on my final road lesson before my license test. My instructor was a slovenly woman, who would talk my ear off every lesson about the pain in her knees and always made me stop at gas stations. At those gas stations, she would use the restroom and buy a quart of ice cream and I would just sit and wait in the car for a solid half hour, which was already one third of the lesson. On that gloomy fall day, she came back with her favorite tub of cookie dough ice cream and she was ecstatic. She placed it on her lap, dug into it, and instructed me to pull out of the parking spot. As I was exiting the gas station, a woman failed to stop at a stop sign before pulling out of the drive through. She gently hit the little blue driver’s ed car, t-boning the back door. I sat there in disbelief. But before I could do anything, my instructor began cursing because dropped her ice cream, bolted out of the car, and charged at the woman, demanding her information. I watched as the woman was chastised, and I pulled out my phone to record a video of the instructor’s tirade. She forced the woman to pull over into a parking spot and came back to the car to call 911. I asked if she was hurt and she immediately started to sob, claiming she had hurt her knee. In minutes, two police cars and an ambulance flooded the scene, and suddenly it was as if my instructor was paralyzed; she was unable to move from the passenger seat. An EMT questioned if I was injured at all, but I was completely fine. He ushered me to the ambulance to get out of the rain. I had to call my father for a ride home. Through a window, I could see my instructor being taken from the little blue car on a stretcher, and I couldn’t help but feel surprised because she had just sprinted over to the woman who hit us. Once she got loaded into the ambulance, they asked me to wait for my father in the police car, which felt like eternity. I eventually had to make up the road lesson and was told that the instructor was fired for not acting appropriately and for insurance fraud for a pre-existing knee condition. I was somewhat of a local hero, because many kids at my school had gone through similar experiences with the instructor and everyone was relieved they wouldn’t have to make that long pitstop anymore. While the incident played out, I created a video with the song Cop Car by Keith Urban in the background. The video turned this whole experience into something where I can look back at and laugh.
As I get older, I find that humor is a very important quality to have. It not only helped with my fear of driving again, but it helps reduce the stresses in my everyday lives. I love to be able to look back at things and laugh about them and find the positive and I hope to carry this quality with me throughout my life and future endeavours.