I was tossed out of a car in a roll over doing around 70 - went through a wooden gate.
Actually I've told this story so many times let me chronicle it from the beginning.
I was a Jr in Highschool the night before a football game. We had a tradition of going out to Gatti's pizza or Furr's as a team the night before games and this was no different, except
1st the kid who was driving had only had his license for three months and it was his first time to drive to pregame meal night.
2nd We stopped at this girls house on the way home because my buddy had a thing for this girl.
3rd The girl kind of blew off my buddy and started fooling around with me.
4th It was my turn to ride shotgun (3 of us) but my buddy was pissed at me and he hopped up front and got no complaints from me.
5th I made my buddy pullover so I could take a leak.
6th A car passed us doing around 70 and dropped the bird out the window. Being young and dumb we gave chase. After the fact we find out it was a buddy of ours in his uncles new car and he reckognized us but we didn't reckognize him.
7th We kept up the chase for 4 miles and had to make a decision on whether to make our turn at the subdivision or keep falling.
8th The car in front of us slammed on their brakes to turn into the highschool and our driver took it into the grass, over corrected when he hit the road and started the flip.
Whenever we talk about it, if we had made one of the decisions above differently we probably would have avoided the accident.
At this point things get a little funny so let me tell you that in the end we all turn out what could be classified as ok.
While we were in our death slide in the grass everything turned into slow motion. I didn't have my seat belt on so I grabbed the drivers and passengers head rest and held on. You only have so fast and one shot to come up with a prayer an mine was, "God, please don't let me die a virgin" As I tried to revise my prayer the roll over happened.
The next thing I remember I'm on my hands and knees. After a bit of a panic I realize that my Lungs weren't collapsed I just had the air knocked out of me. Then I realized I didn't know where the car was. So I start heading back, find a shoe and stick, it under my left arm. Then I come to my lucky Atl Braves hat and stick it under my right arm. I travers over a broke wooden gate, that I would later find out served as my cushion and see the car about 50-75 yards down the road.
I start heading towards the car, with no sign of my friends. I'm within 20 yards or so when I'm interupted by someone saying, "Are you alright." I turn away from the wreck to find a good samaritan has stopped to help us. She tells me that she is an off duty nurse and that she can help us. She briefly begins examing the lacerations around my face, when we hear, "Oh shit, there's a fire" The woman's eyes leave my face and look over my left shoulder. I will never forget how white she turned and no actor could ever duplicate the genuine look of fright that she had. She murmured, "Oh my God, he doesn't even know he lost it." My buddy, had lost his leg to cancer when he was 10, and had been using crutches to get around for the last 6 years. He was our center/nose guard/ deep snapper and also played third base on the baseball team. All of this I explained to the poor nurse who had never expected a kid to crawl out of a mangled wreck and start hopping towards safety. All of this with my shoe was under one arm, my hat under the other, Compressed fracture of the T12 and T13, and a lip that was torn to the nose. Even today I'm surprised that the plastic surgeon was able to reconstruct this handsome mug.
