IIXXII

I was 22-years old, knew everything about nothin' and working a construction job that I loved. I loved it for the wrong reasons though. I didn’t love it because of the work, I loved it for the money that I was making...just under two grand a week.

My demanding foreman, Lenzie, asked if I could stay late that night and load a semi with materials that were needed at a job site at five in the morning the next day. Being the good employee that I was, and seeing a great opportunity to get paid double my hourly wage, I took the challenge and told Lenzie to split, that I’d get it done.

I drove the old yellow Mitsubishi fork truck for close to three hours, coming awfully close to never slowing down. I was on a mission that evening, and I wanted the job done right. I picked and placed the 25 foot long 4X4 planks, the 10 bales of 650 pound #8 rebarb and a countless, seemingly endless number of concrete forms onto the semi’s flat bed trailer. After securing the load with several nylon straps and steel chains, I left soon after. At the same time that I was enjoying the marvelous job that I had just completed, knowing that it would have taken any of the other guys that worked in the yard with me another three hours to compete, in a small, country town ten miles up the road, a sad excuse of a man had just walked into another bar.

When the bartender noticed that the guy in a dirty pair of holey Levi’s and a torn up t-shirt, she quickly realized that he was already over-served. When he yelled down the bar to her that he wanted a Jack and Coke, she acted quickly and diverted his eyes as she filled his glass with just Coke. At the time, because he was so jacked, he didn’t know the difference. After a while of drinking the Coke’s, the rotten drunk began to yell at the bartender for not serving him any alcohol. And as he did such, the four other guys that were sitting in the bar, and quickly becoming fed up with his drunk cohorts, escorted him through the door. After he found the way into his pick-up truck, and started it up, he drove into the five other cars that were in the lot before he got on to Interstate 55.

About the time that he got on to I-55, heading North, I was close to 10 miles from my exit. According to police reports, he flew up the interstate at speeds close to those of NASCAR drivers at Bristol Motor Speedway, 100 miles an hour. But as he drove like a bandit, he did it without use of headlights.

He struck my GMC Z-71 in the left rear corner and sent my Black Beauty sideways into the drainage ditch that separated the highway and the frontage road. After he hit me, he veered left into the median and into oncoming traffic.

That is when the mortality began. The first car that he hit head on was driven by a man that was driving his son home. The father was killed instantly and the son was severely injured. The driver of the second car that he hit in oncoming traffic was driven by a man who was working overtime. He too, was killed at the scene. And after striking a third car in on coming traffic, the drunk finally put his onslaught of destruction to rest.

According to the semi driver that was following behind me on I-55, when my truck reached the top of the drainage ditch, it went airborne, flew over the frontage road completely and bounced, twisted, broke and bent into a giant lump of black steel in the field that it landed in. He said that he stopped his rig as fast as he could to get to me, to see if he could help. He also said that as he approached, he began to make assumptions that I wouldn’t need any help at all because I would be dead. But as he neared my beautiful black clump of tangled steel, he noticed me pulling myself out through the back window before falling into the tall, wheat grass that lined the two roads.

When I awoke from my comma 13 days later, and my parents told me what had happened, I didn’t believe them. I was certain that I had crashed my plane again. Funny thing about that was I didn’t have a plane. I hadn’t even been on an plane at that time. And still, for another four months, I was certain that I had crashed my plane.

After spending close to six months at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and working diligently with the countless number of therapists that I worked with, they released me back into the world. And know, ten years later, I still think about that event most every night.

I wonder if it happened because I was being so greedy and wanted to earn double time pay? And I wonder if it happened as a result of me getting a DUI three months prior to that night? And I wonder if the reason that it happened has even presented itself to me yet? People often ask me if I remember the accident. And every time, I lie to them and say that I don’t.

I mean, I'm reminded everyday when I find myself missing the life that I lived when I was 22. Or the money that I was making when I was 22. Or even the way that I lived when I was 22.

It’s kind of hard not to remember a night like that, especially when I am sleeping or when I am in the shower.

I watch the accident close to every night in my dreams. I can see the drunk coming and I can see him hit my truck bed. I see the truck flipping in the field and finally coming to rest against a tree, that oddly enough, has two wooden crosses pounded into the ground at its base. And I am reminded every shower that I take by any of the marks on my body.

I’ve got a nine inch scar on my right pelvis where they connected titanium plates and pins to my hip to hold it together. And 62 little circle scars from the staples that were used to keep the incisions closed after the surgery.

I’ve got a penny sized scar next to my “twins” where the doctors inserted a Greenfield Vena Cava filter to stop blood clots from reaching my heart. I ain’t figured that one out yet myself, I mean, the filter is permanently positioned in the center of my sternum, why they put it into my body down there, I have no clue.

I now have two belly buttons, the one that I was born with and the one that I got from the feeding tube that was put to use while I was sleeping for all those days. I’ve got a six inch scar, three inches below my original belly button from where they operated to fix my ripped bladder tubes.

And a scar the size of a quarter in the middle of my throat from the tube that helped me breathe while my lung was collapsed that is surrounded with four little dot scars from the attachment devise for the tube so not to lose it in the middle of the night.

And then there are the two on my hips, one on the left and one on the right, that are from the eight inch steel rods that were drilled into the bone and connected to each other by a piece of steel rod so my hips would stay even with each other at all times.

And finally, there is the smooth, tan colored circle on the back of my head that was used for insertion of a tube to drain fluids and blood from my head so not to cause remarkable brain damage, or permanent memory loss. Though I have never seen it, I still know that it's there.

And the guy that caused this catastrophe of an auto accident fractured his femur. I guess when you are as drunk as he was, he had a blood alcohol level of .341, over four times the legal limit in Illinois, you get super powers and can avoid pain and death. But he did get sentenced to prison for a fourteen year stint. And because he had no drivers license, or insurance, and had been arrested five times for driving drunk prior to that night, he was charged with murder, not vehicular manslaughter.

And, if I am doing the math correctly, he still has four more years to serve. I honesty hope that I'm doing the math correctly because I can’t wait for the day that he gets out of the pen. Because on that day, I'll be there to introduce myself to him as the guy that he almost killed. But more importantly, I'll be there to get revenge by finally venting my unrestful anger for the people who lost their lives, the people who were injured and the families of all involved. I can’t wait to see the look on his face.

People often ask me if I remember my accident? What the fuck do you think?