Nobody was around and nobody would know, right? So the kid got in his jacked-up truck and floored it in reverse and blindly on past the corner–and it is a fairly blind corner–and I can only guess which way he was going to throw the steering wheel from there at the T-intersection but it didn’t matter because he slammed on the brake after I left a bit of skid marks on the road doing the same.

The car behind me managed not to hit me either.

It was his mom, coming home early.

As he turned his face quickly away to avoid my eyes, I nodded to him: Proceed.

And he was off, at a prim pace just so.

The mom pulled into her driveway, I into mine, we got out, and she, a tad mortified, me, laughing it off, walked towards each other. This was one of those times when the UV sun exposure didn’t matter, we needed to come together in that moment and no later. Now. For her sake.

The first words out of her mouth were, “He’ll be in college next year.”

I so didn’t expect that–I laughed. It’s okay. Far better that he learn in a narrow miss with witnesses and caught than in something worse later.