The date I miraculously avoided death was January 25th, 2017. I was a part of a class called Leadership. I wasn’t supposed to be in that class; I was accidentally put there but too lazy to ever change it. Throughout leadership class, we endured countless hours of volunteer work. Every week we would walk to Hawthorne to hangout with the elders, and Central Elementary to hangout with the young kids. I had Taya Schubert, Sama Salehi and Keimi Cuellar in my class. They are all my good friends. During the semester, we would walk to Hawthorne and Central rain or shine, without an issue. Never once did we get in trouble, hurt ourselves or do anything stupid. Until January 25th, the day these walks changed forever.

It was a sunny winter afternoon. Nearing the end of the semester, our Leadership class decided to take our Central Elementary buddies to go bowling in downtown Poco. I absolutely despise bowling, so I was already not looking forward to this class. I told myself, Just go Lauren, you will be with your friends. You will enjoy it, I was so wrong. I also didn’t do well on a math test earlier that morning, so I wasn’t in the best mood. We were instructed to start walking during lunch so that we would have enough time for bowling. We followed the instructions as we were told and brought the buddies to bowling. They enjoyed themselves. We didn’t. It was as I had expected it to be. The only unexpected part was the early finish. We had around 30 minutes to get back to school before the bell rang, which is more than plenty. My four friends and I made a group decision to stop at Starbucks for a drink. We all got drinks with high caffeine, so you can imagine we were full of energy. After guzzling our drinks, it was getting time to start making our way back, but since we would’ve still arrived early, we decided to make a little detour. A side street caught our attention because of the two lone shopping carts located on someone’s lawn. We had to investigate. They seemed to have been deserted there as there was nothing in them. It was a sunny day, which means good lighting for photos. These rusted, dirty shopping carts were an awesome background for our photos. It was after the photos, things started to go south. As I was lazy, tired, and not having the best day, I begged Taya to push me in the cart until we got back to school. After lots of convincing, she agreed. I could finally give my sore legs a break from all the walking. When I was a kid I remembered having my mom push me around the grocery store in the cart. I had always wanted to go faster, but she had never let me. Unlike my mom, Taya agreed instantly to push me faster. It started with a fast walk, which then progressed into a jog. Before I knew it, she was doing a full blown sprint down the side walk. For the record, it’s not a flat sidewalk either. It has sticks, rocks and holes everywhere making the ride even more exhilarating. She slowly brought that run to a stop, without an issue. We both had agreed that we needed to somehow make it even riskier. After moments of deliberation, we decided on the curb. Our plan was to go at such a high speed that the cart would fly off the curb and land on all four wheels perfectly. We were both extremely confident our plan would work. I decided to film from inside the cart so that we would have proof of doing it. So Taya started her run which grew into a sprint. Approaching the curb quicker and quicker, Im preparing myself to fly. Uncontrollably, as soon as I hit the curb my cart is instantly thrown and tipped forwards. I am going head first through the air still in my cart about to land in the middle of the street. My friends are all screaming in horror as they witness this event. As soon as I land I feel tears rushing to my eyes, somehow I manage to keep them. I immediately check to see if I’ve ripped my lululemon leggings. Thankfully, I didn’t, but I did cut my knee open and get a pretty bad road burn. Instead of my friends coming to my aid, I can hear nothing but incontrollable laughter. Nobody can get over what had just happened. I could have died. Even though I was bleeding and in pain, I was happy to not have gotten a concussion. After we got all the laughs out, we realized we had 5 minutes to make it back to school on time. This meant we had to run. I would not recommend running after experiencing a shopping cart accident, it is very painful. Surprisingly, somehow we did arrive to school on time. I couldn’t wait to show my class the video I had taken while I was inside. This day I learnt that you should never put your life in the hands of an uncontrollable human on a caffeine high.