Tag - you're hit

I got hit by a car when I was a little girl.  It was on Rosebank Road at that field next to Rosebank Primary and Rosebank Peninsula Church - outside Judy's house, if you're from the Short whanau*.  I had just finished attending said primary school and didn't know the teachers at the new school, giving me a sense of freedom.  I was outside of the law and I no longer needed to cross at the lights on that busy road.  Unfortunately, I didn't yet have that sense of how fast cars go, or whether I'd make it between the moving vehicles passing me.  I remember watching the car approaching, it kind of hesitated like it would stop, it nearly did stop but didn't quite, and I continued to run anyway.  

Neither the driver nor I could really believe it.  In slow motion, I kind of slid over her hood, landing on the grassy verge with a giant graze down my thigh. She couldn't take me home as she was driving a two seater sports car with a baby sitting in it's car seat.  The only other person that stopped was riding a bicycle.  I insisted I was okay and could walk, that home was only 100m away, I'd hardly been hit anyway.  I think I must have been pumped full of adrenaline.  When I got home, I was so exhausted from the shock, I climbed into my bottom bunk bed and slept until morning.  

I told my mum I'd slipped in a puddle as I ran through the rain without my umbrella.  When people asked, I continued to use that as the excuse for my torn up leg because I had a weirdly strong feeling of shame.  For jaywalking, for causing that lady to hit me, for 'bending' the truth.  

*whanau - family, NZ Maori