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Sometimes the life of a student can seem monotonous, lacking any thrill or excitement during the daily repeated schedule of school, work, practice, homework. It dulls life, almost slowing it down. In an effort to create a slight pause in this tedious cycle, we made a choice.
In reference to “we”, I am talking about a handful of students, a group of friends. All burnt out honors and AP students. All exhausted athletes. All tired new hires, learning the harsh realities of retail jobs and flipping burgers. Aside from our after school lives filled with mostly homework and extracurriculars, we are graciously granted a 40 minute lunch. In these 40 minutes, we are encouraged to eat, use the restroom, socialize, and “take a break” from the classes that make up about seven hours of our day. Those activities didn’t suffice our needs that day. We needed a greater pause.
Teenagers are scary drivers, testing the limits of their brand new beater car and hoping they don’t kill their friends in the process. We were lucky one of our friends has a nice car, equipped to take turns at speeds that would’ve rolled my ‘07 Malibu and can accelerate to over a 100 mph in a few seconds. Piling into his car, leaving our backpacks in the trunk, forgotten and out of mind, we turned the music up and got as far away from school as we could. Laughing filled the car, the breeze from the rolled down windows tangled our hair, and the screams when we thought we were for sure going to crash somewhere out in the backroads will forever fill my head when reminiscing on that one lunch.
It was slightly dangerous. Incredibly fun. The more the hand on the speedometer turned right, the more relaxed I felt. It was an unanimous fact that the stress of deadlines, projects, and other irritants from school were figuratively driven out of our minds. Racing through the backroads gave us all such an adrenaline rush we reached a destination in which there was some sort of peace.
And as we pulled back into the dreaded parking lot and drudgingly walked back up the steps, rejoining the tedious cycle of school life, we each smiled to ourselves. It is apparent that sometimes, we all need a pause in life or in our case, just a drive.
The coming of age that driving brings is honestly so scary and I agree with how exhilarating it can feel. It is for sure an adrenaline rush; I loved your description!
ReplyDeleteAmazing post, Taylor!! I agree, little simple moments, such as going for a short drive, can be just so liberating, freeing, and distracting from your everyday life. I loved all of the imaginary and description you included into this post. :)
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