The Wreck

 I was rushing home late one afternoon from work in 1977.  I loved to drive fast.  There was a misty rain, and the roads were slick.  I was on the freeway and hit the off ramp a little too fast.  I hit the brakes, but they locked up and I started sliding.  There was a Lincoln in front of me, which was stopped at the light.  There was nothing I could do but watch my car slide into the back of it.  That was a horrible feeling.
 I wasn't injured except for bruised knees from hitting the dash.  I got out of my car, and apologized profusely to the people in the Lincoln.  They said it was okay, and we both pulled around the corner from the ramp. Their car had a broken taillight.  My car was bashed in big time.  The front wheel on the passenger side was messed up.  The radiator had moved further toward the windshield. 
 The police came had decided that weather was the cause, so I wasn't cited.  I got back to school, as it wasn't far from the wreck.  The next day, I called the Ford dealership and asked them to tow my car to it.  Then, I called my insurance company who told me I should have called them first, because they wouldn't pay for the card being at the Ford place.  It wasn't recognized by the insurance company as an authorized service place.  I did not know how to deal with the insurance folks except screaming and crying, but they wouldn't budge.  The Ford folks told me that the work was going to have to be somewhat specialized, and they could do it better than just a willy-nilly body shop, but I could not afford to get it fixed without the insurance.  I asked the Ford guys if they could work on it, while I dealt with the insurance, and they said no, so my car sat at the Ford place for a week.  Meanwhile, they did give me a rental car from my insurance.  It was a Ford LTD, which seemed like driving a tank compared to my car.  The front end was so long that I felt like I had to brake a half of a block before stopping at a light. 
 I called my father in SC to ask him what I should do.  He called our insurance rep, who got on the phone with the company, and said a few choice words with them.  The insurance company decided to pay for the repair on my car at the dealership, and I had some money leftover afterwards that I used to buy a TV for my dorm room.  By the way, it cost $600 to fix my car, and 50 cents to fix the Lincoln.
 For a long time after that experience, I was very nervous driving in the rain, and I tried to avoid it as much as possible.  My car was never the same after that accident.