The first crash occurred as I drove my mom’s little Anglia (an English Ford about the size of a VW Beetle) to a school picnic. A friend was riding shotgun and two girls were in the back seat. This wasn’t a double date or anything; we were just all going to the picnic. At least I don’t think it was a date, but one of the girls may have been putting a different spin on the situation.
In any event, I drove the car over the crest of a hill on a country road. I was going at a pretty good clip and didn’t realize that I was about to enter a severe downhill portion of the road, followed by a fairly sharp right hand turn at the bottom. A combination of poor brake performance of the car, the weight of four people in the seats and the overconfidence of the driver caused the car to jump the curb at the bottom of the hill, slide sideways and come to rest amidst a shower of dirt. I thought that was pretty cool!
The car, in addition to being filled with dirt, was also filled with screaming, all of it coming from the back seat. We got out and I inspected the car for damage. No flat tires, no overheated engine, no body damage. The brakes were already pretty shot so no further damage there.
Now, you might imagine the most difficult part was getting the car out of the dirt. Actually, the most difficult part was getting the girls back in the car. I had to promise to drive slowly and carefully the rest of the way and, since we were otherwise stranded in the middle of nowhere, we all got in and proceeded. As I remember, the girls found different rides home. So I guess it wasn’t a date after all.
Since the car suffered no damage, I didn’t have to mention the incident to my parents. No one was the wiser. Certainly I wasn’t the wiser. It wasn’t much later that I had my second crash, but this one was different.
I was driving at night alone in the car, heading home from some event, when I passed a pretty girl, about my age, also driving alone. I checked her out in the rear view mirror and then let her pass me. We glanced at each other during that pas de deux and found, I believe, a common interest.
As we approached a traffic light, it turned yellow. The girl, now in the lead car, decided that we both couldn’t make it through the light, so she hit the brakes. I, on the other hand, decided that she was going through the light and I was going to follow. As you can imagine, we both ended up occupying the same portion of the road, with my front bumper formally introduced to the trunk of her car.
As we waited for the police and both sets of parents to arrive at the scene, the girl and I stood silently, staring at our feet. Her car was drivable and she left, following her parent’s car. My car, that is, my mother’s car, was not drivable and we left in my father’s car, following the crashed car on the hook of a tow truck.
I guess that wasn’t a date either.