A.J. Pires

English

September 30, 2010

Essay

The Crash

It happened in a blink of an eye. I couldn’t see it coming towards me. Its glistening lights shocked me. I can’t remember many things that happened in my past, but I can remember that night. In just one moment my life was changed forever.

I was at a high school party. It was the end of senior year. I was getting ready to go to college in a couple months and this would be the last time I saw my friends. So I wanted it to be unforgettable.

I got to the party at around eight o’clock. When I had gotten there the party was a crazy rock n’ roll concert. People were dancing like there was no tomorrow, people were falling down from drinking too much alcohol, and were jumping on stuff like they were in a bouncy house. I was just chilling with my friends watching everyone look stupid. We all danced a little, had some laughs, overall it ended being a fantastic fun night with my friends.

I decided to leave around two in the morning. I was getting too tired and I wanted to get some shut eye. But my gut was telling me I shouldn’t leave just yet. I left anyway though. That was the biggest mistake of my life.

On my way home I realized there would probably be a lot of drunk drivers on the main roads, so I decided to take the long way home.

When I was about a few miles away from my house I started to lose focus of the road. A sharp turn was only half a mile away. That’s when it happened…

A drunk driver made a wild turn on the sharp turn that I was now fifty feet away from. He was coming at me and I didn’t realize it until he was ten feet away. My car screeched as I tried to avoid the crash, but I didn’t have enough time. SMASH! Our two cars collided viscously. My air bag deployed right when I started to come forward saving my upper body.

A few seconds after the crash I felt pain everywhere in my body, except one place my legs. The pain from the crash felt like I had fallen from a hundred foot building.

After an hour, an ambulance showed up. A passing car had called 911 about 10 minutes after the accident. The doctors pulled me out of the crushed car and put me on a stretcher. They carried me onto the ambulance and took off toward the nearest hospital. On the way there they asked me some questions. I only remember one question they asked me and it was, “Can you feel your legs?”

My response was, “No.”

After two weeks of being in the hospital I couldn’t believe I was still alive. It felt that I was in the hospital for an eternity. I was in a wheel chair paralyzed from the waste down. The crash nearly took my life away, and that’s why I have learned that you should live every moment as if it was your last.