Crash

by young one

Posted to Stories on 2004-03-19 14:27:00

I looked away for a second and my life changed. I came very close to never seeing my sixteenth birthday, came very close to death, very close to losing it all, standing on the side of some anonymous road. Thirty minutes prior I had no worries on my mind, drifting slowly to sleep in my friend’s truck. I heard him gasp slightly, it woke me from my comfort. We started to skid. My body jerked to rigid alertness as we lurched forward through an intersection, missing a Mustang by inches and a telephone pole by a foot. The truck stopped skidding. I looked over at my companion and we both knew that we had just experienced a miracle. The truck was stuck halfway in a ditch that went down a long way; it was raining slightly. It was frigid outside the truck. It was futile to get out of the ditch; although we tried. We were picked up by a Good Samaritan who took us to the nearest gas station; he said that the same thing had happened to him about a year back. “Did you get all your shit off of you?”, he asked. I laughed and fingered the 10$ bag of grass we had just picked up. He told us a cop would be there soon. He was a nice guy. The gas station was closed, so the man drove us back to our truck. We said our goodbyes and he drove off. The cop was there just like the man said. The cop seemed tired, and I could tell that this was an unwanted routine for him. He informed us that he was going up the road to find a place to turn around, and then he would set up flares. We said our goodbyes and he drove off. The last of our good Samaritans arrived. He was a nice man. He was in his sixties, a true Tennessee man with a cigar in his mouth and a flashlight in his hand. He gave off a very grandfatherly impression, which gave me a sense of security. He, unlike all the other “helpful” people, was actually in a position to help. He told us his plan of attaching a chain to our truck and getting us out, but first he would have to speak to the cop, who was still missing. So there we were, three guys on the wayward side of a truck, standing on the side of some anonymous road. I was by the tail end, with my friend and the older man further down. I was facing the oncoming traffic, and I remember seeing a pair of headlights up ahead. They weren’t moving over like the other cars had done. I looked away for a second and my life changed. I don’t really remember the feeling of being hit, but I recall the sound distinctly. It was the most horrible thing I have ever been put through, the sound pierced through to the core of my being, it marred me. I opened my eyes and I was flipping over and over and over, rolling down the ditch. Everything became blurry and I had still not understood what had occured. I stopped rolling, kneeling at the bottom of the ditch. I couldn’t breathe. I saw the old man shining his flashlight all around looking for me. It was futile, I was forty feet away. “Where did your friend go?” he asked. I tried to speak but was denied the right. At that moment, I truly believed my life was over. With that realization came acceptance, and that acceptance has changed me in many ways. My breath came back to me and I was overjoyed. I wondered if anything was broken, but my main concern was on the temperature. After about five minutes in the ditch, it began to snow, and I was kneeling in water that was three inches past my knee. The events immediately following are somewhat hazy, but I remember the look on the driver’s face, my friend’s bleeding hand, the old man’s grandfatherly comfort, my swelling elbow, the infinite amount of time for rescue to come to get me out of that godforsaken ditch, the fact that I could not move because I could have a broken back, and the call to my parents. I remember that especially. I had a cheap blanket wrapped around me as i dialed the number shakily. What if they weren’t home? What if I cried? What if they cried? “Dad, I’ve just been in an accident,” I squeezed out and told them where to meet me. Later on my dad told me that he didn’t know what to think, I sounded so monotonous and zombie-like. I was a zombie.
It has been over a year since that occurence (January 27th) but it is still in the back of my mind. What if I had died? I know it sounds vain, stupid, childish, but what would have happened? I don’t mean it in a heaven/hell way or anyting like that but what if they found the baggie? What if I were crippled? The questions played out in my head over and over and over and over but as much as I tried otherwise, they persisted in haunting me. They still haunt me, spectres of what could-have-beens.
All of this, all of this because I wanted to get high.

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