BS Friday

Welcome once again to BS Friday. I'll write it and you tell me if it's true or just plain old BS. Today's post is called: Call Me Crash

I was 15 when I had my one and only car wreck. Yep, 15 and driving without a license with a friend in his Mom's car. Nice, eh?

My friend (who's nickname was already Crash since he had totalled a car already) and I were heading to our Boss's house to party. She was the Manager of the local KFC where we worked and we had become party buddies with her and her roommate. On the way, Crash got this bright idea to stop and pick some strawberries. I can't remember why but we stopped and picked a bunch of them. We had them in these trays of cardboard sitting all around inside the car. When it was so full that only our little butts could fit inside, we decided to go. That's when Crash handed me the keys.

He said it was time for me to drive. I reminded him that I hadn't driven officially and that I didn't have a license but he insisted, so I hopped in and revved up the engine. I was game for anything back in those days.

We started out just fine. I took my time getting used to the car and things were groovy. Then we took a wrong turn. Crash started looking around and told me to stop. We had to turn around. Well, I pulled into this persons driveway and got ready to turn around when I noticed something cool. The driveway was one of those big round things that started at one side of the property, swooped around in front of the house and emptied back onto the road at the other end of the property. I looked at it for a while and then looked at Crash. He was smiling. He had the same thought I did. That round yard sure looked like the perfect place for doing donuts.

Instead of backing out, I took a hard left into the grass and started powerbraking the car. I truned the wheel hard left and the car just kept spinning in circles. We did quite a few loops and then I straightened out and we took off.

This time we headed in the right direction. At a point just before our friends house Crash started yelling at me to stop. I was saying "Why. What's wrong?" but he just kept yelling at me to stop. When I did he told me to go slowly onto this little bridge and to stop when he said. So I did. Once we were stopped he said "When I say go, just slam the pedal to the floor. You'll see how cool this bridge is." So when he said go, I slammed the pedal to the floor. The car just sat there for a while, wheels spinning and the smoke flying. Then it slowly got some traction and started forward. Suddenly it took off. It was wild to see all that white smoke in the rearview mirror.

Of course now we were traveling at a pretty high rate of speed and we were near to our friends house. Crash suddenly started yelling at me to stop again. We were close to our friends driveway. He then started pointing to the driveway that we were going to go into. Me, being the rookie driver, did what rookie drivers do. I started to slow down and my natural instinct was to lean the car that way. When I saw I had drifted too far to the right, it was too late. I tried to bring it back out onto the road but we were into the stones at the side of the road and the car wouldn't come back. I hit the brakes hard, which naturally didn't help much, and the car went into a skid. It didn't stop either. Until it hit the telephone pole right next to our friends driveway. Hit it hard.

I remember sitting there stunned. The noise when we hit was really loud. I couldn't get my thoughts straight. Then I looked over at Crash and I saw all this red color everywhere. I immediatly panicked! I thought he had been hurt bad! There was red everywhere. It looked horrible!

Turned out it was just the strawberries that had smashed all over the place when we hit. Neither of us was seriously injured. The car was. It hit right on the front corner where the frame started. Bent the crap out of it. The car was totalled.

It took months of working at KFC to pay off that debt. I paid for the car because I should not have been driving. Crash took the heat for the mess though. Not long after this incident he had another one. He was T-Boned by 2 college students when he was just driving along minding his own business. He had 3 cars totalled before he was 17 years old. None of them technically were his fault. He earned the nickname Crash.

But for one day I was the one who earned that name.