To find out that my brother was in a car accident and flown to shock trauma was, for lack of a better word, traumatizing.

My family and I have never experienced this kind of devastation before. This was the kind of story we heard on the nightly news, and it never featured someone that was so close to our hearts.

That phone call about the accident and the days and weeks that followed changed my perspective- forever. Learning there were four others in the car when it crashed, and that my brother was one of the only two people to survive, left me feeling equally relieved and heart broken. It made me realize that in an instant second chances can be given and taken away. My brother was given a second chance at life. Unfortunately three others were not.

Many say high school is the time to make mistakes. The problem is that making mistakes comes with consequences, and sometimes we are unprepared for them. In fact, if you give us an inch, we’ll generally take a mile, and sometimes more.

We aren’t cats, we don’t have nine lives. Whether it is a life threatening situation or just a fight with a friend, the next screw up could be the last.

I’ve always thought that you were allowed to mess up more than once. With my terrible math skills I have probably messed up nine billion times. With my lack of filter before I speak, I know I have probably said a ton of things I shouldn’t have.

However, having flaws is not an excuse to not try to fix them.

One of these days I’m not going to be given those extra credit points to pass math, or I’m not going to be forgiven for something I accidentally say that offends someone. Unlike the reality of my brother’s accident, second chances are not inevitable. .

With graduation soon, so many of us have such long lives to live and opportunities ahead of us. As much as we’d like to believe it, we are not invincible, and unfortunately a lot of us have not seen any real consequence for the errors we make. Not yet.

Certainly we have made petty mistakes and even a few big ones, and most of us have been awarded our fair share of each. But I have learned that if you have to question something before you do it, you probably shouldn’t be doing it.
Seniors, there is no more room to blunder, and relying on a second chance is like relying on our weather forecasters this winter; it’s inconsistent and undependable.