My friend and I stood pacing outside of a local antique shop in Savannah, Georgia. Our friends shopped inside as we stood awaiting an answer from a local automotive shop.
My slushie melted down its straw, liquefying in the southern sun that had already turned our skin the color of a crawdad boil. Our answer arrived: His car was shot, suffering from an engine malfunction that could lead to an explosion on our 700-mile journey home to central Ohio.
Despite our change in circumstance, my friend remained level-headed. We stacked the luggage that couldn’t fit into my car, leaving my friend’s behind with a large cooler, clothes, a guitar and a few more random items. We climbed into my car, packed to the brim with our essentials and wacky souvenirs.
The wind rushed through our windows — open with hopes of washing out the smell of shrimp and the seemingly millions of gnats that had invaded the car. The smell of sea salt flung through the car along with wisps of hair. Despite the hurricane of wind, hair, gnats, pork rinds and sand — the car pushed forth. Packed shoulder to shoulder, we left the little house in the marsh in our wake. Something about my senior year spring break seemed like it should have felt climactic. However, there wasn’t any capstone feeling I experienced. We simply smiled and hugged one another as we pressed onwards to our slightly colder home in the north.
Have a Bright Spot to share? Send it to Managing Editor Julia Lerner (lernerj@denison.edu). Tell us about the moment that made you smile in under 200 words, and try to include a photograph. We’ll add it to our growing list of Bright Spots on TheReportingProject.org!