I’m going to tell you a story. (“Type you a story” just does not have the same ring to it.)
After you read this story …tell me whether or not I had a lucky childhood in Meriden, Connecticut.
I was 16 and had recently gotten out of car jail. The first night I had my license I begged my parents to let me take the car. Where? Anywhere. Just give me the keys. They said yes despite a heavy fog rolling in. I decided I was heading down to King’s department store to buy a record. I was rapidly becoming a nut for records, sitting in my room for hours at a time listening to whatever was hot on AM radio.
I went to King’s and bought a copy of Hey Jude. Hey Jude was by the very popular group the Beatles. On my way out to the car I noticed that it had become dangerously foggy. That didn’t faze me in the slightest. I had a good twenty minutes of solo driving experience under my belt.
I found my way home, turned into the driveway and immediately smashed my mother’s car into my father’s car. Or it might have been the other way around… my Father’s car into my Mother’s car.
That’s not really the point. The point is that I managed to crunch both cars with one swoop.
So I was in car jail for a while and it was a fair cop.
Calm down. That’s not the lucky part. Here it is:
When I got out of car jail, my buddy Billy told me about a party. It was being held out at some cabin at some lake. I don’t remember what lake or who owned the cabin. I don’t even remember a lake anywhere near where I grew up. Billy promised he could get us there and when we got there, it would be “girls girls girls”.
So I once again begged. I was getting good at it. My Dad gave in and lent me his newly fixed car with the promise that I was not going out of town.
We went out of town.
It was pouring rain. Positively pissing rain, if memory serves. Billy Sacagawea’d us to a lake where we slowly shimmied down a muddy road towards a building that looked like it might contain girls. (girls girls)
We got stuck in the mud. I was out of town when I was suppose to stay in town. I was still on some sort of double secret car probation. And both back tires were sunk in good old lake mud. Oh yeah. It’s all coming back to me. Also, did I mention? It was a holiday.
I honestly don’t remember how but we managed to get a hold of a tow truck guy and talk him into coming out and towing us to safety. We had no cell phones. I don’t remember actually finding a cabin to use their phone. Let’s just say that Lassie ran and got help.
I am soiling myself in fear. How do I explain getting stuck in the mud out of town? Well I guess I can just keep my mouth shut. He’ll never know.
The tow guy came and fastened his thingy to the back of my Dad’s car’s thingy… and started towing. What he forgot to do…and this is a key mistake… was tie the steering wheel so it would stay straight. As he pulled, Dad’s car swerved in the mud and bashed into a tree, crunching the bumper and creating a Wallflowers song with the taillight.
Now I was officially dead. The car was free and we could drive home to be executed. The rear of the car looked like a Picasso painting.
How lucky do I sound so far?
We got back into the safety of town and were discussing distribution of my estate when we stopped at a light in the persistent, pissing rain.
The car behind us didn’t see us stopped. (Probably the one headlight)
Boom. He rear-ends us. We all leap out of our cars. The man who hit us was apologizing at the top of his lungs…”I’m so sorry!” “I was going too fast!” This is all my fault”
These are exactly the things you want to hear in an accident.
He had hit us in exactly the same place as the tree had hit the car. We got his insurance information. Dad was just happy that we were obeying the rules, minding our own business IN TOWN (shhhhh) when some fool hit us from behind.
Too bad there weren’t any Lottery games back then. I would have bought a ticket and I’d be a millionaire today typing on a much more expensive computer.
Oh well. Still……
Lucky, right?