Car Wreck 1990

Dean Cade
Jul 7
4 min read

Life can change in only a few seconds. I was 19 when I had my second car wreck. The first was when I was 16. Chased by the police, I drove through two fences and splashed into a ditch. Unscathed, I got out of the car and ran away—the second time there was no running.

I was a wild, confused teenager. Two friends were in the car wreck with me, Mike and Ty. I met Mike months before; he had a cool truck with a rad stereo system. Blasting the Beastie Boys was hella cool. Al was one of his friends. I was still in the closet and was infatuated with Mike, who was straight. He had dark hair and piercing blue eyes, a perfect all-American male. We went to a concert together, Front 242. It was at a venue off the Richmond Strip. The crowd was wasted, and there was a chain-link fence around the stage. Concertgoers were throwing beer bottles at the band. It reminded me of the videos I had seen of the Sex Pistols, and I always wished I would’ve been old enough to see when they toured. The Front 242 show was a blast, even avoiding the shattering beer bottles. During that time, keg parties were huge in the neighborhood. It was the culture. After one wild night, Mike and I hooked up. It was a one-sided thing, but goddamn it was hot. We never spoke about it.

The night of the car wreck was Mike’s birthday, so a bunch of the gang dropped acid. I refused because I had to drive. Guys are way competitive about almost everything. This guy Patrick and his friends had stopped by my house, mentioning a party, so we decided to go check it out. I took my grandmother’s Mercury Sable with Mike in the front seat and Ty in the back. Patrick dared me to race him, so we lined up on Minnesota Street and revved our engines. His truck was more powerful, but I was the crazy one. We peeled off, leaving tread marks on the concrete, and raced through the neighborhood. Turning to cut through a yard, we bounced back into the street, catching up side to side with Patrick’s truck as we both went through one stop sign. It was hard to keep up. I skidded around another corner onto a straightaway. I sped ahead. Patrick must have gotten spooked and fallen back. I won. We laughed, passing the second stop sign. Another vehicle smashed into us, and the car spun around in slow motion.

The nighttime suburban intersection did a 360 in my view. The impact was insane: the car t-boned into a telephone pole. Glass shattered and flew in the air. My arm also shattered bones, breaking the steering wheel as Mike flew out the back windshield into the street. In shock, I reached for the door, and my arm crunched. In the worst pain of my life, I yelled. Out the gaping hole in the roof of the car, I watched the other driver get out of his truck and run away. I heard Ty cussing as he somehow got out of the car and walked in circles. I couldn’t imagine the experience on acid. Breathing heavily, I used my other arm to open the driver’s door, and the pain was excruciating. I have never felt pain like that. I checked on Mike, and he was breathing. My pain was too intense to do much else. I had to lie down in a yard, unable to straighten my arm. My thoughts scattered like glass on the street, and I knew it was the end.

Hospitals and surgeries followed. I had a titanium plate and 21 screws put into my upper right arm to hold it together. Ty was the luckiest; his back hurt, but nothing serious. I was more concerned about Mike. He had bruised his brain and ruptured his spleen on impact. Bandaged up, I visited Mike in the hospital. He was ultimately cool with the accident and even kept his mom from suing mine. I felt so awful. I would go to the park and swing on the tall chain swingset, straightening out my damaged arm by letting it hang. While I was swinging, I knew I had to change. My wild teenage years ended in that instant along with my plans for the future. I had seen a recruiter to enlist in the Navy, but then after the wreck I was unfit for service. It was never going to happen. I did not know what I was going to do and felt lost. I could hear my grandmother’s condemnation in my head: “You need to straighten up and fly right.”

I would like to say that moment turned my life around, but the world is complicated. I tried really hard to be better. But I was born slippy. After the wreck, I spent another 15 years of misadventure. I don’t regret the past, for those are the times that shaped me.

Dean Cade