Scariest Moment

I absolutely hate driving in the rain. The roads are slippery, the windshield gets foggy, and other drivers continue to zip around despite all the increased hazards. Back home I drove a small Ford Ranger pickup truck. I've never driven anything else, and after a few months I had gotten used to everything besides parallel parking (which I still struggle with...), but poor weather was too fickle for me to master.

One weekend after a heavy rain my mom and I went to run errands and pick up her dry cleaning at a shop just off the freeway. Before getting in the car she warned me to be careful and that the roads just after the first rain were always the worst. I listened, but I had never had any difficulty driving before. I figured it was a common sense thing, and since I don't tend to speed or pull risky maneuvers, I went about driving as usual. We got to the dry cleaners fine, and as we were leaving I stopped at a red left hand turn light. A few cars were behind me, and a few were in the intersecting lanes. When the light turned green, I pressed the gas and suddenly lurched forward.

The back end of my truck spun out, and for an instant I had no control over the vehicle. I don't even remember how I moved the wheel or if my foot hit the break. I just remember skidding out of control and then in a quick moment my car was on the side of the road on a dirt path, out of traffic and without any noticeable damage. My heart was racing, and I could tell my mom was equally freaked out. The cars behind me proceeded through the light without any problems. There was no accident or crash. But being helpless in such a dangerous situation without even knowing what to do was terrifying. What if I had turned into oncoming traffic? What if I wasn't parallel to the trees but rather embedded in between them? I can't even imagine the horror of discovering I had injured my mom or anyone else all because I hit the gas a little too quickly.

Every time I pass that intersection my mind flashes back to that one moment. I'm probably the most grandma-like driver in the rain ever because I'm so scared of making the same mistake. I actually make my mom drive if it has been raining, or I don't go out at all. Maybe it was the lightness of the truck bed or something specific on that one road, but I'm still convinced that I shouldn't drive in the rain because I can't handle it.