November 29, 2021:
We drove my mother's canary yellow '68 Nova up to the mountains. Me, a highschool kid I hung with for a bit, and a very beautiful girl he was too shy to ask out. (I did it for him.)
I was new to driving and decided to explore the limits of the car. I wanted to see if I could get the speedometer past 100 mph. Somewhere in one of the reservations with cows on each side of the road I floored it. When the gauge it 100 in my elation I checked the rearview to see if my passengers were enjoying the experience as much as me.
It was then I saw that the very beautiful girl was terrified. White knuckled, white faced, big-eyed. And I understood that what I'd done was selfish, stupid, and irresponsible.
It's significant to me today that it took the look of horror on a beautiful girl's face to lead me to that understanding. Where my few and far-between moments of insight have often been driven by the unforeseen consequences of my interactions with women.