Mattia Calvetto

Professor Brittany Temple

English 101

2/14/24

I always loved the adrenaline boost and the sense of omnipotence. Sounds normal

right? Yeah, but I wanted to take this statement to the extreme to discover my limits, or better

said, our limits.

Before coming to the USA I did not care so much about cars and their power. Yes, I

always liked Lamborghini and Ferrari but it was only for their aesthetics. The only times I

was using a car was to get places that were too far for a bus or metro and too close for a

flight, and I wasn’t even driving it, my parents were. It all changed when I arrived in the

United States at 16. I was a sophomore and quickly became friends with all the seniors in my

school due to my Italian past and the mystery of the “new guy”, and finally, the emotions got

to me. The initial kickback that would sink you deep into the seat, the swerving through

traffic at 120mph like Ayrton Senna at the Monaco Grand Prix, and the prestige that this

brought to you in the eyes of the others. But still, I was only a spectator, but I wanted to be

the protagonist.

The first time I sat in a car and pushed the ignition button, I felt it. 1’200 watts

flowing every tenth of a minute, the starter gear engaging, and the unmistakable cracking

sound of a car engine starting up. She is ready. I open the intake valves, and everything else

starts flowing like a stream of water underneath a bridge. The first gear is engaged, and the

sky starts to get stained with gray clouds. The explosions created by the motor are turned into

power directly injected into the crankshaft. The perfectly engineered system of gears in the

powertrain allows me to go in only one direction, forward, and I feel some drops starting to
fall from the sky. I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t care, I am already where I’m

supposed to be. The second gear is engaged with phenomenal speed, then the third, the

fourth, and fifth. Is that the limit? I take the first corner and feel Mother Physics right next to

me. She is strong, but my car is even stronger. I exit the turn and floor the acceleration pedal

once more, now it's raining. The speedometer reads 80mph, 90mph, 100mph, and suddenly,

like thunder in a storm, the sixth gear joins the ride.

Now the storm is finally here. She screams, but it's not fear, it’s freedom that she

feels. And in a blink of an eye, we are at 150mph. The soft stream of water has now been

transformed into an overflowing river. She starts to shake and I can feel it. We found, the

limit, and it feels like we are not even touching the street anymore, fluctuating like a UFO on

a visit to Earth. I let the gas off, and slowly, shines of light broke the raining sky till it was all

clear. A rainbow appeared ahead of me, and everything returned to normality.

Living life always on the edge is not possible, one day you are going to slip into

oblivion. I was street racing against a friend of mine. We were going 120mph down a main

road with a limit of 25mph. It was a late night with heavy rain, so no one was around and I

couldn’t hurt anyone, apart from myself. We had to pick up a friend of ours living a couple of

blocks away from the start of the race. He had a lower-power car so I knew already I was

going to win, but that didn't stop me from pushing my car one more time to the max. Maybe I

did it for my personal battle, or maybe I did it to humiliate my friend in a worthless

competition, but that’s not important. What’s important here is that, when we had to take a

sharp turn, I did not realize how fast I was going. The turn was on a downward slope and it

was full of water. My car hydroplaned hitting the sidewalk and sending it fly for what my

friend remembers as 5 seconds, and then it landed on the front lawn of an apartment building,

and finally, I hit the brick wall of that apartment complex. From inside my car, all I heard was

an initial loud bang, which I just thought I was going to lose the front bumper and that would
be it. Then the front windshield turned all black, I thought it was just because it was very dark

out, but then the brick wall appeared and I heard it again. BOOM. I completely destroyed my

car, and that was the end of it.

What I found out about this whole story is not remorse, fear, or sadness. What I was

able to find out was the emotions a lifeless piece of steel and cables can give to someone.

What I found out was that people were not the only ones giving emotions, but we should

search for them in everything that surrounds us, you never know where the next big emotion

will come from. And as someone once said - "A love between a man and his car can only be

understood by those who have felt it."