Remember when....

I remember growing up, my mother always told me to make sure that I had clean underwear on when I left the house...the premise being, you never know if you're going to be in an accident, lol! Well I have a new one to add. However I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let's start at the beginning. I had been spending some time at my mom's apartment while she was in New York. Staying at my mom's is like staying at a hotel. Her place is immaculate and there's always food, not to mention cable. However due to some unforseen circumstances, my mother decided to come home early Saturday evening, totally disrupting my much needed hiatus and throwing a monkey wrench into my plans. Good thing I love her, lol! Sorry I'm rambling. To get back on point, I immediately decided that this will never do and packed up my things to come home. Don't get me wrong, it had nothing to do with my relationship with my mom but the circumstances surrounding her coming home early. I hurriedly tidied up and left. This should have been a quick trip from Halifax to Dartmouth...what could go wrong??? As I was approaching the MacDonald's Bridge(for those of you who know where I live) I noticed the lights on my dashboard going dim and to make matters worse, it started to downpour. I turned on the windshield wipers and they started in very slowwwwww motion. At this point I tried to contain the panic that I could feel rising up and told my 2 youngest children to start praying. Oh yeah, I had Camden and Raven with me on my little sojourn. To top it off, there was only one lane going on the bridge, hardly the place you want to break down. I kept repeating over and over , "Please God, get us over the bridge"...which He graciously did. Then I found myself approaching the highway and I started saying, "Please God get us off the highway" and again, He did. By this time the lights on the dash had almost faded completely, the brake light was on as well as the annoying ding of the seatbelt whatchamacallit. The kids also noticed the digits on the clock starting to disappear. As we approached Main street, I seriously considered my options and thought that maybe, just maybe, I might make it home and kept driving. I got to Dave's Fruit stand on Main St. and prayed even harder because it was raining like crazy and there was a stretch of nothing pass Dave's. Up until this point we had gone through 4 sets of lights and every one of them had been green. As I drew closer to the 5th set of lights, the van started jerking as I started to slow down for the approaching red light. Apparently God was still rooting for me because it turned green, I was on the homestretch. I could feel relief bubbling up inside. That was short-lived. I guess the guy in front of me failed know that I needed him to speed up to and drove very slowly. This forced me into the left-hand lane and into the very busy intersection of Main and Forrest Hills where my van died and panic rose in all its glory. I fumbled to put the van in park and took my foot off the brakes. The next thing I knew I felt a bang and looked in the rearview mirror to see another car attached to the backside of the van. My first thought was "what the heck is your problem buddy...you saw that I had stopped" Thinking back, I really hope that that was the language I had used. In my ignorance and fear, I jumped out of the van and asked him why he hit me since he saw that I had stopped. How deflated I felt when he informed me that I hit him because the van had rolled back, duh! I prompltly bursted into tears. I think all the panic and stress just took over...such a "girlie" thing to do, yuck! Of course I apologized and inquired as to whether he was hurt, which he wasn't and then proceeded to reassure me that it was okay. I felt humiliated, stressed, panicked and to add insult to injury, I had to borrow his cell phone. While I waited for my husband to arrive he kept telling me that it was okay there was no damage to forget about it and waited with me for Darren to show. Here's where the new advice comes in...LADIES DO NOT LEAVE HOME WITHOUT A BRA!!!!! The entire time I was speaking to this very nice and thoughtful young man, the girls were hanging to my waist. In my hurry to give my mom some space, I didn't bother to put a bra on when I left the house. I was mortified and of course could not just jump into my van and find my bra with my 2 kids in the vehicle. When Darren arrived on the scene I think I started crying more out of humiliation than anything else. Needless to say, I spent most of the evening hugging my arms trying to keep the ladies pushed up and contained. As soon as I could, I dug through my bags, grabbed my bra and rushed over to Darren's car and gave the girls a lift. As I got up to drive my husband to work this morning, I started out the door braless...took one look at the rental and went back downstairs to make some minor adjustments.