mainsqueeze's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- anywherewithanyone So, Crystal went and got herself in a car wreck. She wasn't the one driving- She was the middle passenger in the cab of a pickup truck, between a co-worker and her husband. From what she told me, it happened while the co-worker was turning left, and some old man was going straight at about sixty miles per hour in a thirty-five zone, t-boned 'em. She said he hit them just a little behind the spot where the cab ended and the tail began, just a few feet from where she was sitting. Crystal's all right, though, a few bumps and bruises, but she's okay. She nearly started crying when she was telling me about it- You know how young people often think of themselves as invincible? Well, this accident scared that right out of her. I'm just so so glad she's not hurt, or worse. The way I felt when her Grandmother told me about the wreck was the same way I felt when Erika's parents told me that she had left home and nobody knew where she was. She was gone for three months, three agonizing months. She didn't call because she knew I'd let her parents know she was okay, and she didn't want that. I remember digging up an old cassette tape she made me when we were about thirteen, of her talking and telling me about some things that had been going on with her, and I listened to that tape every single night until she came home. I kept thinking, "What if she's gone forever?" and it nearly drove me crazy. When she finally resurfaced, she came to live with my Mother and Lise and I because she wasn't welcome with her family. She stayed in our guest room for six months, and then she went to the JobCorps and she got her GED and she learned how to repair cars and she met her future husband. She was pregnant with Autumn when she came home a year later, and now she's a married woman and a Mom and she's got a sweet, devilish little girl and a house-husband. I don't have to worry about her so much anymore. This accident, it also made me think about my own feelings toward, well, cars. It sounds really ridiculous, but I think that I haven't learned to drive yet because I am so terrified of getting hurt, or hurting somebody else. When I was about fifteen, right before all of my classmates started to drive, I was involved in an accident. I was with an older friend, and we were stopped at a fairly busy intersection in Green Valley. I was staring out the window, lost in my own world, when I heard a sickening crunch. The car in front of us had slammed into a man on a motorcycle, and he was thrown way out into the middle of the street. His shoes had been knocked right off of his feet, that's how hard he was hit. The car I was in sufferred minor damage, maybe a dented fender, and the car the had hit the motorcyclist was fine, too. The man on the bike, though, oh god, he was in bad shape. His motorcycle was in pieces all over the road, and he wasn't moving at all. The people who had hit him didn't even get out of their car. I remember being shocked and furious at them- They just watched what was happening through the window, like they'd knocked over a traffic cone instead of plowing into a living, breathing being. I remember the police lights flashing on and off and on and off, and the smell of the road flares, and the man bleeding on the asphalt and there wasn't anything I could do. The kids I was with, I never saw either of them again after that, and to this day, I get behind the wheel of a car and I tighten up and my breathing becomes shallow. People don't realize the huge responsibility that comes with driving- It's an extension of you, a big, heavy, metal extension, and it can kill people. It can tear through the sides of buildings and it can smash other cars and it can completely crush a human being, and it requires all of your attention. Anyhow, happy fuckin' driving, kids. 10:59 p.m. - 2003-06-21 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||