GIVING MYSELF A BRAKE: FROM REGRET TO REALIZATION
ALM No.94, October 2026
ESSAYS
February 18, 2026, marked a turning point in how I treat myself. If I’d written about it immediately, it would’ve likely been the angriest, most impassioned rant I’d ever produced, but shortly afterward I looked back with a different mindset.
I’d just finished tending to the pets of a friend, who needed me to house sit while her family was on vacation. The entire Northeast had been clobbered by a blizzard during days past, and the entire afternoon had just seemed discombobulated—so needless to say, I was on edge.
There I was, though, getting into my snow-ridden sedan on what might’ve been the steepest driveway I’d ever seen, when something thwarted my fantasy of a relaxed, decompressing drive home. The car wouldn’t cross the driveway’s threshold—which was odd, because it had entered with little difficulty and there didn’t appear to be any serious snow blocking the tires. I slipped in and out, removing as much snow as I could reach and periodically trying to accelerate out of the driveway. It was probably my eighth or ninth attempt when I decided to call my parents.
While on the phone, two men—likely in their twenties—approached the vehicle from behind. They’d been watching from a few doors down; I could see them observing and discussing with one another what their next steps should be. “Hey man,” one of them said after I rolled down the driver’s side window, “are you stuck?”
With a level of ease, these two Good Samaritans were able to push the car into the street. I thanked them, which seemed pointless, because there would almost certainly never be a time at which I’d be able to repay them or express my gratitude adequately. And while the predicament seemed to be dissolving, something still didn’t feel right. I pulled over to the side of the road. As it turned out, the guys from before had been driving behind me during the few yards of progress and now reported that my rear-right tire appeared to be stuck in place. I thanked them again and shut the engine off in concession to the great force of nature that had landed me there.
So then, there I was, silently blaming myself, then the tires, then the snow, and then myself again. I grew impatient with the whole ordeal, itching to get home for the sole reason of not wanting to be in that moment. I was embarrassed that it wasn’t even the first time I had gotten my car stuck in the snow; I’d only had it for nine days, after all. And when my parents had arrived, guided me back into the friend’s driveway, and my mother had said, “Alright, now park it—and don’t forget your emergency brake,” I reached with my foot but couldn’t find it. It was already activated.
I’d forgotten the emergency brake. Due to the incline of the driveway, I’d applied it before going inside and then allowed it to slip my mind. That’s what it had been the entire time, and I hated myself for it. On the ride home with my mother, I sat in disappointment—not anger, but disappointment. I was being scooped up into the arms of others all over again despite the very premise of my independence lying within that car. I thought about the poor guys who took time out of their day to help me, and I thought about how they must’ve seen me: an ignorant, self-righteous teenager who’d been given a license and had gotten cocky.
“Hey, it’s an inexpensive fix, at least,” was the first thing my mother said after I admitted my mistake.
“There are worse things you could’ve done,” my father told me later that night. “On my second day working at your grandfather’s dealership, I creased the entire side of a brand-new minivan and cost us 3,000 dollars in damages. He was in his office at the time; imagine me going in there to tell him about that.”
I truly was grateful for how forgiving my parents were. However, I was a seventeen-year-old in somewhat of a state of introspective conflict; any attempts to ease my self-beratement were essentially futile. In hindsight, it did appear as though a minor incident was regarded dramatically, but still I held no conviction that such a thought process was unjustified. It went beyond the emergency brake; I simply couldn’t get over the fact that I kept letting things like this happen. On my first day of owning a vehicle, for instance, I’d lodged it in the bank of a friend’s driveway and his father had to dig it out with a shovel.
Sure, it was regrettable. But after the fact, I began to view the experience as something of an epiphany. I struggled to grasp the idea that, despite my aspirations to make an impact on the world, I couldn’t reliably complete an ordinary task. It got me thinking, and I decided that I have relatively few ordinary skills in the first place. I was so obsessed with the big picture that I’d forgotten to sweat the small stuff.
But I was no longer going to give myself such a hard time. I was young and inexperienced, and whether I liked it or not, I was going to make mistakes. Part of my mind would always be in the clouds, and perhaps that wasn’t such a terrible thing. And one day, I decided, I might find myself a few doors down from a kid who’s gotten themselves stuck in somebody’s driveway. And would I say to myself, “Well, I oughta let them figure it out by themselves; that way they can feel independent”? Absolutely not. I would grab a friend, knock on the window, and offer a helping hand. Oh, and sure as anything, I’d say, “Hey, is your emergency brake on?”
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