It was the summer of 2018. My family and I were on our way back from the annual trip to the Rusian River in California, and we had a great time with barely any hiccups. We decided to stay at my Nana’s for the night, who lived in Santa Rosa. There was a water park nearby that we planned to go to the next day before we headed home.
As we were all waking up, my Nana made us breakfast. She made toast, eggs and cut up some fruit for all of us. My siblings and I are not morning people and kind of wanted to just go home and skip the water park, but my dad was very persuasive so we went. Everyone was in a terrible mood, especially my little brother who we call Brendarian when he’s being a monster.
Once we got all settled in, everything was fine. The first slide we went down was a tube that dropped straight down and gave the illusion that you were just freefalling. To be honest it, hurt a tad bit because it had grooves that scratched you, but it was still fun. There was a bunch of slides where you go down on an innertube. We almost flipped over on one because it was a four person ride with a weight restriction, and my dad and brother (who was 8 at the time) were sitting across from each other. The innertube went side to side on the giant slide but then dropped with my dad on the lower part. The innertube then started to tilt forward, and my brother fell on my dad as we leaned to keep it from tipping and laughed it off. We ended up having almost too good of a time, but we left feeling content.
We got back to the car and everything clicked. That feeling I had was spot on. The rear windshield had been broken in; mine and my sister’s huge bags of our favorite clothes were both stolen. On the bright side, they didn’t steal our phones that our dad made us leave in the car. We reported it to the water park, and they got it on camera. The car didn’t have a license plate and you couldn’t see the guys’ faces, so we couldn’t do anything and made our way home.
We didn’t make it past two blocks before my younger sister and dad were arguing. Then, while we were stopped at a stop light, we were rear ended. A teenage girl two cars back was texting on her phone and hit the car behind us, which then hit us. Let me tell you, our car looked like a real hot mess with a broken back windshield and dented bumper on the side of the road.
By the time my dad got everything sorted out, we were all too exhausted to drive all the way home, so we ended up staying with my aunt who lives in Chico. It was already dark only halfway there, so it was a good thing it was a warm night. Then to put a cherry on top of our unfortunate events, a deer ran into the road out of nowhere and we hit it, but Bambi got right up and trotted along.
At that point, it felt like we weren’t going to make it home alive, but we obviously did. My sister and I even got money from our insurance company for new clothes. In the end, it’s a good story to tell and we had fun, besides the disastrous events.