High School Boys and Tragic Ends

There is so much sad news this week about local teens. Three high school boys died in a single car crash while their sole survivor friend is in critical condition. They were 16 and 17 years old. They were all wearing seat belts. Excessive speed is to blame. A high school senior died the day before his graduation. He was goofing around and fell 10-15 feet.

Speed.

Four teenage boys were driving home from Bible study, cruising on a back road. I can only imagine the sense of invincibility coupled with high doses of teen boy testosterone. I can hear the backseat friends egging on the driver and feel the whoosh of exhilaration of the steering wheel gripped by a 16 year old’s inexperienced hands. The boys were high on life, crippled by spring fever, and tasting the glory days of summer that were just within reach. If I stretch my memory back to high school in 1986, I can taste the teen spirit that permeated our every pore. I too was invincible, rather, I thought I was. I was the passenger in cars like that, trying to be cool and pretending to enjoy the ride but praying for safety at every hair raising turn on 21 Curves, the bane of every driver’s ed student in Charlottesville, Virginia. I rode in cars that were too powerful for 16 year old sensibilities, but that’s how people rolled where I grew up. Few people drove beaters that puttered and guzzled gas. It wasn’t uncommon to see BMWs, Audis, and the like in our high school parking lot. I remember feeling unnerved that the kids’ cars were fancier than the teachers’. I wasn’t a speed demon myself, and in 27 years of driving, I have never gotten a ticket. Ever. Speed scares me.

Somehow I survived, as did my friends (except for two who died drinking and driving…yet another tragic story that makes me tremble with fear for my sons’ safety). We are all parents now and lived to warn our children of the dangers of living recklessly. Now as  mom I can understand how my dad must have felt when he got the call that I was in car accident at age 16, hit by a car that ran a red light. I had had my license for a week. In an ironic twist of fate, my old hand-me-down Fiat died near the local high school. This was the days before cell phones so I walked to a nearby convenience store and called a friend. Cathy came to pick me up, and BOOM! We got hit on the way home. My seat belt saved my life. I was lucky. And I’m grateful every single day. I don’t go through a stop light without wincing ever so slightly to this very day.

A Promising Future and Esteemed (Short) Life

The senior who died the day before his high school graduation was just being a prankster I imagine. I don’t know the circumstances of his accident. I just know it was senseless. It sounds like a case of “boys being boys.” He was apparently a kind soul, a generous person. He was off to Harvard this fall. He was to deliver a speech at graduation. His parents tended to funeral details when they should have been toasting their son at a graduation party. I can think of nothing crueler. I can’t take my mind all the way there, to that place where parents grieve. It’s so dark there that it’s blue and black and void of the joy that makes us human. I don’t know how a mother recovers from this news. I don’t know how a parent goes on.

I hope to never join that sisterhood.

I am terribly sad tonight. I spoke candidly with Bird and Deal about speed demons and responsibility. I told them that we love them so fiercely that we cannot bear the thought of them being hurt. Or worse. I don’t know how to hammer this lesson home. I don’t know how to teach my sons about good, safe choices. I don’t how I lived to talk about my bad choices.

I don’t know how these mothers go on.