Chapter 4 - Car Accident
After breaking my neck, I didn’t just quit baseball, I continued to attend the practices and games and hung out with my teammates. As far as I knew, I would be playing with them again next year, my senior year. Little did I know, this accident and not playing baseball this season ended up having a dramatic effect on the course my life would take. Anyway, on this particular day, I think it was the first day of the conference tournament. Our team did well during the regular season and we were ranked first and therefore got to play the eighth-place team from JFK high school. We were out at their field playing an away game, I had driven separately from the team so that I could leave early to go to a doctor’s/psychiatrist appointment (don’t remember which). Just like the year before that, we were losing, and things weren’t exactly looking like they were going to turn around. At some point I recognized that my moral support was providing fuck all tangible support to the team and I decided I could leave. At this point, I should mention that I’m pretty sure I’d taken one of the painkillers for my neck, but in no way felt slowed or impaired. I hopped in my dad’s 2002 Subaru WRX, in that world rally blue that is just burned into my memory from years of watching rally and countless hours spent washing the car… I loved that car.
In any case, I took off heading down Highway 40 towards the Washington University medical campus. Throughout the drive I found my consciousness being dragged down, out of the world around me, and into the realm of sleep. I would snap back to consciousness, only having lost a few seconds, but going 70 miles an hour down the highway, it is definitely not ideal to lose a few seconds (at 70 mph, you traverse just over 102 feet each second). Instead of stopping, I figured I could push through, like I’d done a number of times previously. Now, you can probably guess what happened next… My brain shut off for just the right amount time, at just the right place on the highway, and I woke up to the road gently sweeping right as I continued straight. I’m not sure if I woke up just before or as a result of hitting the highway median, but I was sure as fuck awake now. The left side of the car leapt into the air, climbing the highway median as I was ricocheted back towards the center of the road. The car came slamming down destroying the suspension components on the left-hand side of the car (wheels, brakes, wishbones, suspension… all obliterated). Given that I was going about 70 miles an hour, the car continued to slide across the highway for a while and as I rotated around, I distinctly remember seeing the car that was driving behind me slowing down and the driver, wide eyed, just watching the disaster unfold before them. It must’ve been a hell of a show for them… honestly, it was objectively entertaining on my end - minus the horror that is wrecking your dad’s car due to unadulterated stupidity. I ended up sliding all the way to the far-right side of the highway where my car came to a stop just after the on ramp from Kings Highway. I’m pretty sure it was the driver who was behind me who stopped and called 911.
Thankfully, I had crashed on the highway, probably within 500 yards of the hospital, so it didn’t take long for the ambulance to arrive. When the paramedics got there and began checking me out, the first question was obviously, “where did the neck brace come from? Did you already have this with you?” At which point I had to explain that I had broken my neck a few weeks previous, also doing stupid things. As they continued to check me out, they notice my broken thumb. Oh, I guess it would be good to explain that before breaking my neck I was playing catcher for my friend Matt, who had an arm like a fucking cannon but basically saw the world like he was underwater, and I would call for a pitch, he would not his head in acknowledgment, and then throw whatever pitch he felt like because I probably just looked like a squiggly amoeba at the other end of the gym [the world is a sadder place without him, fuck]. Well, I caught an unexpected curveball on my thumb rather than in the pocket of the glove and it snapped my thumb in two places [I’ve broken my fingers countless times so this didn’t seem like much of an incident]. However, the paramedics noticed the thumb brace, which honestly looked like one of those old-school rollerblading wrist guards, and began inquiring about that, at which point I had to explain it was also due to an unrelated incident. They giggled a little bit. Next, they came across the scratches on my back and began to ask if it was from the shattered glass during the accident. Now I have to explain the fact that it is from shattered glass and an accident, just a different one because I’m an ass hole. At this point the paramedics are legitimately fighting back laughter but when they see that I’m totally fine (from this accident at least) they began to have a good laugh about it. This is the scene that my mother and sister arrived to; me, sitting dejected in the back of an ambulance with the paramedics laughing and the car destroyed.
