Mom Knows Best (personal narrative)

"Everything will be fine I said, we've all wanted to do this for a long time and this is the plan that we've made".

My mother's response came “Peter I don't think that it is a good idea, it’s too late, i dont have a good feeling about this".

This is not the answer that a freshly 16 -year-old high school student wanted to hear from his mother. It had been a fun day full of the typical high school dance activities. This wasn't just my first high school dance; this was also the first date I had ever been on. We had gone to the 49th St. Galleria and had a really fun time. Then we went on to dinner my friend Mike's house. His parents were out of town and had given us free reign over the house. We were on top of the world.  Then, finally it was off to the dance. But that wasn't enough, we had planned to drive up to my family’s cabin in Woodland to watch a movie and have a good time after the dance was over. Little did any of us suspect the events of that night would change the course of our lives forever.  Homecoming dance for high school students is very exciting; the boys look dapper in their suits and tuxedos dressed out all to the nines. Also, the girls look beautiful in their different prom dresses with many different colors, styles and shapes and sizes it looked more like a tropical reef than it did a homecoming dance. My best friend Richard and I were experiencing all these things together for the first time. What Richard was lacking in size he made up for in chiseled from stone muscle.  His mother made him dress like a leprechaun every year for St. Patty’s day to celebrate his Irish roots and run bread around to all their families’ fiends. His body was tight from years of competition soccer and wrestling in the 130 pound weight class.   Richard was a month away from turning 16 himself and his parents let him go to the dance. We'd been friends since I'd moved into the neighborhood and we had experienced many "firsts" together as we had grown up. Since he lived two houses down from me it was a very tight friendship. Alongside our other friend Jordan who was in the grade above us in school but lived just a block away, the three of us were inseparable. We called ourselves the three amigos. We had decided to go with Jordan’s older group of friends because not many sophomores went to the dance.

                My date had to be home and couldn't go to the cabin with us. So did Richard’s. So I said to Richard, whose date also had to be home,  "Come on, come with me I don't want to be alone with the group of people that all have dates and I don't have anyone to hang out with".

Richard said "no I want to go to bed".

I said “come on dude".

Finally after a little more convincing Richard consented and at 10 o'clock we began the 45 minute journey up the winding Parley's Canyon road in the dark toward the cabin. That is when I called my mom and she had tried to talk me out of going up to the cabin, but I wouldn’t have any other way but mine on this "night of firsts."  The car was an explosion of sound.  Between the high school kids crammed together, 16-year-olds nonstop talking and the radios we resembled procession of caged circus animals rather than people headed off towards a fun time in the woods.

When we got to the cabin my parents were already there.  My mom said to me,  “Pete I really think it is too late for you guys to be watching a movie and then turning around and going back tonight".   My indignant response came:   "Mom! It will be fine".

Emboldened by the fact that we had arrived there without any problems and the by the fun that we were hoping to still have; I didn't want to listen to my mother because I thought she was overreacting. There wasn't anything to worry about. In front of my friends and not concerned for my mother’s over protective counsel we went forward with the plans.

              We popped the top to the Martinelli's Sparkling Apple Cider and opened all the candy that we'ed been saving for the movie and began to have a great time. We started the movie and quickly found that we all had our two cents to throw in about the acting so it ended up being more like a standup comedy routine. Everyone was trying to get the best "zinger" about how lame the movie or the dialog or the senerio was. The Movie finished and at about three o'clock in the morning our group of once routine teenagers piled into our different vehicles and started down the dirt road towards home. The feeling in the car was much different than the feeling we had going up. Everyone was tired, everyone was quiet.  Except for Richard and me we were both in a punchy mood, the kind you get into right before you hit the wall and crash hard.  At one point Richard hopped out of the car when we got to the final gate on the dirt road he took his button up shirt off from around his head with this tie still tied around his neck and said "Look at me, I’m a Chippendale dancer".  But once we got back on the highway and started for Kamas it was a loosing battle with sleep. Richard was asleep fairly quickly against the side of the door of the second seat right behind Mike, the driver, in the Tahoe and I was in the middle of the second seat. Mike and his date were up in the front.  The conversation to keep everyone alert began to be just between me Mike and every now and then his date.
               As we came through Kamas it looked more like a ghost town than a thriving High Uinita farm town.  We took a left turn at the only stoplight in town. We pulled over to shorten the gap we had created with Mike's fast driving. We were far enough ahead of the group at this point that as we took the left turn none of the other cars that were behind us had seen us take the left so they all went straight through the light. The left turn is the only way to get onto the highway to head towards home unless you know the back roads.  If you go straight on the main road it would take you through 45 to 50 miles of small towns before you connect back up to the freeway right around Evanston Wyoming. We didnt want our friends to get lost so at three thirty in the morning, we flipped around and went to catch up with our friends that had taken the wrong way.

                We came up behind the procession of our friends cars traveling down the three lane road. At this early hour of the morning only little streetlights illuminated the area.  As we approched our friends, we flashed them with our high beams to get their attention and have them pull over. Instead of pulling over, our friend Kevin who was driving the last car in the procession flipped a U turn and T-boned us. This caused us to sail into a tree, a telephone pole and the fire hydrant before landing back in the road. The sounds of metal crashing and stretching were horrific. When we finally stopped moving and came to Mike asked, "Is everyone alright"?   
              I looked around and said "Richard is gone"!

As I pushed my way out of the mangled wreckage that once was Mike's parent’s car I ran down the road searching for my lost friend. My mind felt like none of this had really happened and I was in a bad dream.

The I saw a dark shadow lying face down in the road. It was Richard and he wasn’t moving.  I reached around and checked for a pulse,........ Nothinng.

                It dawned on me that we were in trouble so I groped around in my pocket for my cell phone and after producing it immediately dialed 911. While I was on the phone with the 911 operator, after I told her where we were and what happened I began to lose consciousness.  My world seem to be going black and I will remember looking down the road and seeing the lights of the police and emergency vehicles coming towards me before I slumped over and fell face first on the road.

               When I came to, I was in the back of the ambulance and as I began to thrash around and tell the EMTs to go get Richard, to go look at him, one of them grab me by the shoulders and looked directly in my eyes and, said, "When we got here, Richard had already gone."  I sank back down on the gurney and didn't know what to do. Eventually all of the other kids in the two cars were put in the ambulance with me. Aside from Richard and me, no one else was even injured.

               A few months later I was at home contemplating what to do with my Friday night. As you may know, Fridays are very important to a soon-to-be junior's social life. The phone rang and it was Jordan. He talked for a minute and then I answered, “Sure, it sounds like it'll be a fun party."

              When I hung up the phone my mom asked, "Who was that?"  I answered, “Jordan, our friend Ben is having a party tonight and I think we’re going to go."  She thought for a moment and then said, “Peter, I don't have a good feeling about this party I dont think you should go." 
                    I then replied, “OK, I'll call him back and we'll go catch a movie instead."