Car Crash

It was Sunday, December 21st, 2008, the Sunday just before Christmas. I was home for Christmas break, save for the time that I would spend visiting my Uncle David and Aunt Wendy in Key West. I hadn't seen Bobby D, Stefan S, or Rory H for a while, and somehow one of them told me that all three of them would be at Rory's house that night, so I decided to go. My mom said that it might be icy so I should take her car, so I did.

We hung out, we played pool, some video games, I took pictures of M&Ms, we played fooseball, talked... not really sure what else we did. At one point I left to visit a couple other people, who were partaking in drug use, though (as always) I did not partake.

Anyway, I left sometime shortly after 11pm. Rory lives in a neighborhood right off of Mattson Road. In the section where he lives there are a lot of neighborhoods perpendicular to the road, often at crossroads, and they always have stop signs and Mattson doesn't. So I was driving down that road, past some neighborhoods, keep going, past some neighborhoods, keep going...

I remember there was CD on at the time and I was flipping through it with the control on the steering wheel. I saw a crossroad coming up and thought that I didn't have a stop sign. I was going about 40MPH, maybe, on a 35MPH road.

I did have a stop sign. I recognized it when I was maybe 10 yards in front of it. It was definitely too late to stop in time. The car was too big and clunky, and if I tried to stop, I would have just been sitting in the middle of the intersection. I didn't have much time to consider what to do, and it's a pretty lonely road, so I thought it was best to just spend as little time in the intersection as possible and if I run a stop sign, fine, I run a stop sign, at least I'm safe.

No.

I was not safe.

As soon as I made the decision, I saw headlights approaching from the driver's side. God damnit. I didn't panic, it's not like I made a decision not to panic, it's just that you don't panic in situations like that instinctively. I remember thinking very quickly that I was probably going to die, and regretting being such a terrible driver, and feeling very scared because I was pretty sure I was going to die. Like, quite sure.

I think I should emphasize that I was really very sure that I was going to die.

Not knowing what else to do, I sped up, hoping to get out of the way. At the very last second, the other driver swerved to the right and slammed his brakes on, too, to try to avoid hitting me, although there wasn't much he could do. His car slammed into the read driver's side door of my mom's car. It was incredibly loud, and the airbag went off, and it felt like a shotgun went off in my ear while I was getting tackled by an NFL linebacker at the same instant. The car did a 180, or even more, and ended up on the other side of the intersection, facing back on the right side of the road toward where I had just come from. I took it forward for just a moment to try to let other people on the road pass.

The important thing that I realized very quickly was that I had survived. Hooray! Life!

I turned the car off. I got out and apologized to the other driver. There was a ringing in my ear that didn't subside for hours, I went to sleep with it that night, the window was smashed and the car was cold as I waited for my dad and the police, and I apologized to the other driver. My mom told me more about her miscarriages that night that I had known before. The police officer asked me if I was drunk or if I was high, she said my eyes were bloodshot, but no, I'd ever drank or smoked in my life and I guess she believed me because she didn't even Breathalyze me.

The other kid's car was totaled. He knew some kids in Garnet Valley, and I think he said that he was just getting back from a concert that night, or something along those lines. He didn't show up at the court date so I never even got a ticket for running the sign.

The point is, I'm alive.

Peace out.