Dude, Where's Your Car?

I spent the evening up at the hospital with my family, trying to figure out the randomness of stupidity, and life in general. Last night, I was at a wind-up party for the team I coach. Included in this party was a nice young man I'll call "Dude". Dude is one of my favourites; he's got a great attitude, good sense of humour, works hard, comes to practice, and is skilled. Aside from that, he's a close friend of my son's. Also at this party were two other young men on the same team who have been in car accidents in the past two weeks. One put his face through a windshield. It doesn't seem to bother him much that he's in for many months of plastic surgery. The other young man is more responsible about it, and is working to pay for the car, and accepts culpability (he didn't have insurance).

Back to "Dude". During the party we discussed these two accidents. There's nothing unusual in this. No foreboding. Can't say there was any karma or voodoo or impending sense of doom. It was just us doing what we do: shooting the breeze.

Tonight I got a call from one of the other boys on my team. He was obviously upset, and asked if I knew that Dude had been in an accident. Turns out this other fellow had been trying to reach me for several hours. Dude was in critical condition at the regional hospital and things didn't look good.

What the fuck?

Fractured skull, bleeding into the brain, elevated heart rate, lowered blood pressure, broken collar bone, bruised heart, and suddenly, a lung that was collapsing. What the hell is this shit? Yesterday we sat and lamented his inability to play the last tournament with us, since his mother was taking him out of state. Now this? What could happen in such a short period of time? Well, I'll tell you what could happen.

Drunk drivers, that's what could happen. Drunks who just have to believe that they're manly enough to swallow half a dozen Coors before heading home. Drivers who insist on drinking and getting behind the wheel of 4,000 pounds of steel and then jetting out onto the pavement at 50 miles an hour while imagining they are in total control of both it and themselves. Well guess what, asshole: the scrawny boy lying up in intensive care, with a tube shoved down his throat, and medications being pumped through tubes to syphon blood out of his ever-swelling brain doesn't think you're as good a driver as you seem to think. And while his truck was flipping end over end, the boy in the passenger side didn't think you were that good, either. Remember him crawling out while the truck was upside down, and screaming at you? Remember him kneeling on the ground and begging his buddy not to try to get up, not to try to speak, until the ambulance arrived? No, you probably don't. You were probably too damned busy trying to figure out how you were going to weasel out of this mess.

But the rest of us knew. Every one of the thirty or so people gathered in that room waiting for SOME sort of update knew what you didn't: that you weren't in control. All it took was a flip of your wrist, and your car tucked itself under the left side of his and sent it sailing. And while we sit there and watch Dude's mother and grandmother making a vain attempt at bravery, you go home without a mark.

She looks so tired. She comes out every so often and gives us as much of an update as she can, this motley group who's been thrown together by tragedy. It's all we really have in common. I don't know many of them, and they surely don't know me. What they know is that I came in looking frantic and saddened~and so did all of they. We're bound by our caring of this active party-boy who wants nothing more than to get better and get on with the business of living and driving and putting this tragedy behind him~provided he gets the chance.

And you? What do you want?

Maybe what you want is that in a few years, no one gets drunk and takes it out on YOUR child. After all, no matter how much I despise you right this second, I wouldn't wish this on anyone.