Hoping that I would get another 5:15 a.m. call declaring another snow day, I reluctantly crawled out of bed this morning full of disappointment. 

I thought attempting to pry open my frozen car door while the freezing rain sliced my hands just to turn on my defrosters was going to be the worst of my day. 

I was wrong. Scraping the thick layer of ice off my windshield also was the least of my worries. 

I carefully slid down my driveway and out of my neighborhood, feeling like I was in a game of Mario Kart, drifting around because the roads hadn’t been treated. 

I approached the school and was concerned about the Rock Road entrance as I had been warned by a friend not too far ahead of me that there was a huge patch of ice right in the turn lane.

I drove slowly and cleared it without any problem. I was relieved. 

That feeling quickly left my body when I saw the hazard lights of the person two cars ahead of me. She had stopped for a school bus, who needed more room to turn, but remained stuck at the top of the hill. 

Not panicking yet, I watched the situation play out. The person behind her got out of his truck to talk to her. Meanwhile, traffic is piling up and running into the intersection. 

Once the traffic that was exiting cleared, the person in front of me decided to enter the other lane and go around the stuck truck. The rest of the line followed as people were honking and worried because we needed to clear the intersection. 

Just as he was about to reach the top of the hill, he stopped. I thought, ‘this can’t be happening. There’s no way he was stuck, too.’

Once again, I was wrong. 

Now, we were really in trouble. Both lanes of traffic were blocked. 

Once SRO Amanda Stitt arrived, the boy in the truck got out to explain. Directly behind them, I patiently waited for instructions, assuming we would somehow turn traffic around or get the trucks moving again. 

Just as I thought we were nearing the end of t10 minutes of catastrophic events, the truck in front of me began to slide backward, straight toward me. 

During all the yelling and commotion, I tried my best to stay focused and back up as I was instructed, but when I was in reverse, my car didn’t move. 

My car was stuck and the truck slammed into the front of my car. 

I was so frustrated – not at the bus, the first person to get stuck or even the person whose car hit mine.  

I was frustrated because, if we didn’t have to come to school today, my car wouldn’t have a huge dent in its front bumper.