I had forgotten the date. I'm glad to know it again, because that
accident is still among the most important events of my life. I think
about it often. It's come up in therapy more than once. It's something
that I always reveal at some point to people I become close to, and
when I do I'm stunned anew by the terrible realization of how close I
came to having my life snuffed out at 16. And then I think about how
close I came to killing my friends, too, and the thought of it is so
painful that I wonder why the accident doesn't haunt me even more than
it does. Neither Bill nor Andrea treated me any different after the
accident, and in fact, no one did. I didn't get in trouble with my
parents--no serious trouble, anyway. They were probably just glad to
have me back alive, and the fact that they never saw the car or my open
wound probably made the accident somewhat abstract for them. I guess
I'm glad they don't know how utterly terrible it was. I sometimes
wonder, though, whether the lack of any real consequences from the
accident caused the trauma to recede, still potent with unresolved
questions and fears, into my unconscious mind.

For a long time, I described it as a freak accident. That I was passing
the tanker, and our car was either blown toward or sucked toward the
truck, and when I tried to turn away I overcorrected and ended up under
the truck's back tires. It was years before I could admit to myself and
others that the accident happened because I wasn't paying attention. It
was entirely my fault.

I was so detached at that age from personal responsibility and
self-respect. Typical for a teenager, perhaps, but I had it bad. I wish
I could say that the accident imbued me with an appreciation of my own
mortality, but I had several more years of recklessness ahead of me.
When I describe those years to people who didn't know me then, they
have a hard time believing it. I've mellowed out--at least where the
physical safety of myself and others is concerned. I no longer feel the
need, for example, to pass three cars at a time on a winding country
road--a need that resulted in another totaled car, about a year after
the first one.

In sum: I am very sad that I got myself and my friends into a terrible
accident and scared my loved ones. I am very, very happy that I didn't
kill Bill or Andrea or, to a lesser degree, myself. And I'm delighted
that it was I who walked away from the wreck scarred for life, while
Bill and Andrea were unhurt.