independence day.. hardly free for me! (two brief essays)

"twisted metal, lettered highways, and other scenes you'd expect to see in 'final destination' "

by: christopher muether

the fourth of july just had to crack my skull with a salient smattering of irony. while cruising in the middle of nowhere (a.k.a. pacific, missouri) with my right hand man tim wittmann at my side, all we were concerned with was getting our party on. after a brief meeting with our party hosts, we were informed that we had to follow a caravan of cars packed with kids to the as of then "undisclosed party locale". while following the leading car on highway N (you know you are in the boonies when the highways all have letters. . . or {gulp} double letters.) i had to floor the pedal just to keep up. however, unlike our chaperones we had the distinct disadvantage of:
a. having a top heavy chevy geo tracker
b. having no idea where the FUCK we were going
and c. not seeing a key left-hand turn.

in the most terrifying event of my life the car began to screech is spasmodic agony as i lost control of the wheel, and in an absolutely surreal moment that still seems completely unfathomable and even fictious to type... my truck rolled .... and according to our post trama estimates, the exact trajectory of the vehicle was a complete 180 spin followed by a 3/4 side slip, landing us facing the wrong way on our passenger side door in the the right shoulder (a nearly 6-8 foot ditch!!).
during the roll i have no idea what i said, but it was likely something in the vein of "OH MY FUCKING GOD, WE'RE GOING TO DIEE!!". well i didn't die, i actually wasn't even scratched. but we had landed on the passenger side... so i looked over at tim, and began to shake his shirt. he didn't move.. i screamed "TIM TIM ARE YOU OKAY!".. he didn't budge. i was freaking out, and ready to begin crying. i felt a liquid substance all over... i thought he was dead. i thought i had killed my best friend!
luckily, tim, in perhaps the most ghastly prank of all time, came to and laughed, "gotcha". it would have been funny, EXCEPT MY FRIGGIN CAR WAS DEMOLISHED!
i began stuttering and repeating the mantra "i can't believe this is real.. this is real tim .. what the hell happened.. what did i do".
i climbed out of my drivers side window (keep in mind that it was at this point facing skyward) and attempted to find some essential items i lost in the crash: my glasses, my wallet, and my sanity. before i had the chance to find any of the above, tim and i heard possibly the most hellacious sound in history. according to tim, it sounded like a crude mixture of a dobberman and a wild toothed boar (or some kind of animal you can only find in magic the gathering; leave it to tim to make a magic card joke at a time like this!). in complete fear for my life i scaled the top of the truck and dove headfirst back into my window so i might be able to cheat death a second time.
our predictament was grim (but luckily not frostbitten; sorry black metal fans!). we had no way of turning the truck - which was surprisingly driveable - back on its wheels due to both the depth of the ditch and a nearby tree that would damage the truck further if we tried. our only hope was to call triple-a roadside assistance for help. without my wallet i had no idea what number to call! i was beyond terrified, and called our party hosts five or six times to tell them what following the caravan had amounted to. it took some time but we finally got ahold of them and they were, unsurprisingly, shocked! while they were on their way back we talked to a friendly man who stopped to help out. he told us to call 411 (something i hadn't thought of in my panic) to get the number of triple-a. finally help was on its way.
lots of help that is. the local police, ent's, fire department, and tow truck men (two trucks mind you!) all came out to get in on the action. other than the towers, the others served relatively no purpose whatsoever. seeing tim get his blood pressure taken was pretty comical considering he didn't have a single scratch on his body. in addition, the troop of party kids who included two super cute girls xty (umm thats christy for the uninformed) and amanda kept us company during the ordeal. the road in other words was flooded with enough commotion to keep me distracted from the fact MY FRIGGIN CAR WAS DEMOLISHED!
with some decent flashlights (and no, two seperate offers to use a lighter does NOT constitute decent lighting) i was able to search for my lost parcles. the first to turn up was my glasses, nestled under the top frame of the passenger side door, which means they traveled from my face all the way across the car and just outside window. holy shit. they could have very well flown much farther out the window and been 20 feet into the woods. in addition, they were completely unscratched! holy poop! the wallet however was no where to be found.
but the time had arrived to finally remove the damaged goods from its rocky pit. watching the tow truck rake the starboard side of my formerly beautiful red truck across the literal coals was one of the most agonizing scenes i've beheld. tim theorized that perhaps more damage was done during the drag than the crash itself.
possible, but according to my dad's prognosis the next morning (during a revisit of the "crash scene"), the puncture wounds we would soon be privy of were not the work of brutal towman, but rather the doing of the mulpile rotations we endured. it also took the clarity (both mentally and literally) of daylight to realize how luckly we were to still be alive. the ravine was far deeper than it seemed to be at night. i am also completely confused as to how the truck managed to turn a complete 180 before falling to rest (the crash didn't seem that chaotic, it seemed more systematic).
luckily tim was able to find my wallet after the truck was recovered. we drove the mangled beast home (in fear it might explode due to some unforeseen damage). surprisingly after such a brutal wreck, the truck seemed to only sustain exterior damage. but for those reading.. i can't stress this enough. WEAR YOUR SEATBELTS! .. i know it is the only reason we are alive today (that and a newly acquired lucky rock complete with abe lincoln's face sketched cruedly with a sharpie marker!)
so yes, the true irony of this july fourth is that it has been anything but a day of independence, in fact, it stripped me of all of mine.

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here's the follow up written by tim wittmann (with permission of course) relaying his accounts of the story::

7/4/05, A Day that Will Live in Infamy, Broken Glass, and Puke-Soaked Towels

by: Tim Wittmann

I enjoy random outings. I enjoy making plans without knowing the details, rushing headlong into excitement, taking turns too fast, rolling into ravines out in the boonies...

I had waited my whole life to do what I did at around 12:30 am July 4th. No no no... don't get me wrong... I wasn't giddy with anticipation over the prospect of drinking with a girl who calls herself xty (pronounced 'criss-tee'... and really, it should just be xy, but whatever, she's a dumbass), or her tankish male friend Fumble (have I stooped to a new low if I'm hanging out with people named after sports motions? I wonder when I'll meet Curveball... or his cousin Dribble...).

Well, actually, that really isn't even true. I WAS excited about partying with some fine-ass chicas, as always. Just... when I met them... and realized they had to be 16, 17... maybe even 15... yea. I wasn't into the idea of possibly getting sloshed and then porking something so delicate. I will admit though, this girl with a tatoo on her lower back? She was good to go...

Anyway, I was with my friend Chris, out in Pacific/Eureka or thereabouts... and we were to meet xty and friends at the local Micky D's, where the sock-hop was slated to commence. Wait... this isn't the 50's... let's try this again. That's where... oh yeah I remember now. That's where we were slated to take off on a high-speed chase (not even filmed for COPS!), us following them all the way to the party.

I say 'high-speed' because... uhh... these girls were fucking FAST! Chris at the wheel in his Geo Tracker could hardly keep up. Poor dood. Not nearly as accustomed to his acceleration pedal as some... but he discovered his lead-foot just in the nick of time... to send us rolling into a ditch.

Yes, the impossible was possible that night.

I could not believe what was happening, but I had to remain in control. I had been in a couple crashes before, and, occasionally, I've had morbid thoughts... about crashes just as bad as this one. I had thought a lot about what I would do if 'it was me.' Well, now it really WAS me, and the burden of prophecy was now pressing against my disheveled body... as I lay prostate against the passenger side door and the gravelly, exposed ravine floor simultaneously. I was soaked in Coca-Cola forcibly removed from a Taco Bell cup formerly to my left, the Tracker's cup-holder no longer serving any visible purpose.

The set-up was perfect. There would be perhaps no moment more suitable than this to enact my destiny. It was go time. I had been warming the bench my whole life; no one wanted Wittmann to take the field... either that or they just never really wanted to get into a bad car crash--a wish which, although well-intentioned, had left my ultimate plan to languish cold and dormant in the depths of my thoughts for almost two decades time. Silver and silent.

Now was the volcano.... the molten-river that would melt away the glacial ice surrounding my destiny.

So, as the vehicle came to a complete stop, I let my body plunge into the dirt. I let my jaw rest slackened against the loamy earth, and my chest fall silent. Eyes shut. Muscles loosened. Blood turned to slush.

NOT! Hahahaha... I only pretended to be dead... but it definitely freaked Chris out! After what must have been an antagonizing minute, Chris shaking what appeared to be a lifeless corpse, I smiled, looked at Chris, and said, "Gotcha!"

We made it home just fine, and I point you to Chris' Xanga page for additional details about the recovery effort.

...you're probably wondering what puke-soaked towels have to do with anything. Stay tuned... I only took you through the morning hours! I still have the evening of the 4th into the 5th to ramble incessantly about! MWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!