It’ seems to me that almost everyone has a good car crash story. Fortunately, I’ve never caused a car wreck myself, but I’ve been in a few. This one happened back when I was a mere sixteen-year-old on a rainy Friday night in Pennsylvania…

I didn’t have my license yet, but my friend Chris (same guy from “That was Awkward”), who was also sixteen, had just gotten his license recently. He picked me up from my parents’ house in his blue Oldsmobile, which had many amusing quirks, one of them being that you could take the key out of ignition while the engine was running. Yeah, that’s safe.

We were on our way to the local movie theater when it started to rain. Now, Chris was never that great of a driver, but he was especially inept when it came to driving in areas that he wasn’t familiar with. So, we drove down Orrs Bridge road, which curves sharply to the right just before you go over a short

bridge. Chris, not being familiar with this particular stretch of road, took the turn a little fast, fast enough for me to brace myself and say, “Whoah, dude!”

We made the turn but the car slid over the center line and smashed almost head on into an oncoming car. After the impact, we sat in the car, silent, for a few moments before Chris said, “Man, accidents suck.” From that point on, Chris and I for some reason could not stop laughing. We laughed as we exited the car. We laughed as we realized the three people in the other car were safe. We laughed when we realized that we knew the other driver—a girl from our high school class, who was in tears. And we even laughed when the cop showed up. Now, this wasn’t a very “funny” moment per say, but our laughter probably came from a source of relief or nervousness. It also didn’t help that Chris was wearing shorts, sandals, and a pair of outrageous rainbow-striped, knee-high toe socks for some reason. “Man,” he said, looking down, “why did I wear these socks?”

As Chris went over things with the police officer, and as the other driver and her two guy friends regained their composure, I picked up a piece of Chris’s bumper from the side of the road, a memento from car crash number one.

Related posts:

1. Car Crash #2 (Almost)
2. That was Awkward