A Learning Experience:
Since I was a baby I have been riding on anything with a motor. My dad has always called me his little spitting image hell raiser. 4 months old and he had me in his arms riding his 2-stroke four-wheeler around the dooryard. Of course at that age I didn’t know anything. As I got older though all I wanted to do was ride on them. When I got my first ATV to call my own my dad didn’t even lecture me, he showed me what was what and to be careful ‘they’re dangerous.’ He’d say. He always wanted me to be the type to learn from my mistakes and grow. Of course this didn’t mean he’d let me drive off doing a hundred, he secretly adjusted the governor on the little 90cc wheeler he bought me so it couldn’t go over 25mph.
At 17 I was able to move up in the ATV world and dad passed down his Can-Am Outlander 800cc wheeler. This thing has an HMF exhaust to make it wicked loud and a chip to make it wicked fast. It’s something I hold close to me, something I am very proud of. At this point in my life I was even more of a spitting image of my father, I drove like him, drove like a bat out of hell, power turns, donuts, getting stuck in mud holes you name it.
One day I decided to take out his Can-Am Commander, which is a side by side, sort of like a high-powered golf cart, which can reach up to 75mph. I wanted to take it out riding with my friends up a mountain that afternoon because someone needed something to ride and it had an extra seat. While waiting for my friends to get to my house I called my dad to see if it was alright for me to take that for the day instead of the 800. I remember his words like it was yesterday. “Just please be careful, you’re not used to driving with a steering wheel so don’t go showing off cause the ass end can whip around some quick and you’ll be in the bushes.” I told him I understood and I could keep in touch all day.
While waiting for my friends I took the commander for a little ride around the yard and through the trails we had made. My dad was right, I’m not used to driving an ATV that has a steering wheel, and this one didn’t have power steering so you really had to man handle it. At high speeds the Commander can get a little wobbly especially if you aren’t used to it. As I came up the trail on the left side of my house I sped up behind to the back field and remember catching a little air off a small hill. I got a big smile on my face cause it was fun. I whipped it around a little corner and gave it some gas up the next path and the ass end was pointed towards the field and the front towards the woods, it was a power turn. Which normally in a power turn; say I want to go right, the front end may be pointed left, and I’ll slide left but once the back tires catch I’ll slide around and go right where I want to. This time when the tires caught, my high speed didn’t allow me to go right. I shot straight into a tree. At 25mph I stopped dead with my foot still on the gas pedal. Looking down I saw a bent steering wheel from the impact on my chest.
As I was able to catch up to speed with everything that had happened, I stopped and looked down at blood covered leg. My leg was cut from theectrical column underneath and the wheeler was no longer running. I broke plastic, bent the frame, poked a hole in the tire, broke the left axel completely and literally ripped the stainless steel wheel almost in half. I didn’t hesitate to call my father. I knew I had really f****ed up but I wasn’t going to waste time especially since my leg was bleeding and it hurt like hell to walk. Thankfully he was out on the motorcycles that day and had a couple beers because he took it a lot better than I thought. I told him what happened and he knew what I meant. I wasn’t comfortable on it and didn’t know how the wheeler would react going that fast around the corner. It was my mistake and I told him I would pay for everything. He told me his first ATV accident happened when he was younger and that he crashed his dad’s wheeler too. He didn’t to say it but he had warned me.
By the following week I spent $1,500 on parts and him and I took just a few days to fix it. It was a learning experience and I guess that’s why he didn’t scream at me. He already knew that I knew what I did wrong. Sucks learning the hard way but that’s how life goes and that’s why my dad and I are so close. He lets me learn on my own and doesn’t criticize me. He’s a great man and this happened about 3 years ago and I believe I am a better rider today.
Aw, Ashley, you really really have to break a piece this long into shorter grafs. Apart from consideration from your audience, your writing improves if you think in paragraph-size chunks instead of sentence-size. Paragraphing is part of the deal a writer has with the reader, and it's not just one more dumb thing your fourth grade teacher tried to ram down your throat.
ReplyDeleteInteresting piece. Long careful set-up and background. You use the story to point the reader toward the ending of the piece. There is definite action in the middle, not to mention blood and broken machinery!
But that middle section, the heart of the piece, the story does not quite satisfy. This is like the story of Icarus who wouldn't listen to his dad and flew too close to the sun and so crashed and burned. You're Icarus!
But the story of Icarus is a story of pride humbled and of excitement overcoming caution. What's missing in your re-telling is you--your pride, your excitement, your misplaced self-confidence, your willful disobedience, your setting your thrill up against your father's caution. Too much is implicit, not quite enough explicit--we want to know what was running through your head, we want to know the why of the story, not just the what.
Hmm, very interesting and helpful response! I am taking a course with the lovely Leslie Gillis and we just did a detective story piece. I had to to 2 drafts and a final revision piece. I learned SO much from reading and re writing my story and it grew to a much better more developed piece. I think I need to do this with everything.
ReplyDeleteThank you!!!!!!
Hope you are doing better.
I'm doing fine, thanks. Many pieces can improve with rewriting and multiple drafts, but I only ask for a rewrite when a piece is pretty darned broken, which this isn't.
ReplyDelete