Performer: Blue Öyster Cult
Songwriters: Donald Roeser, Richard Meltzer
Original Release: Fire of Unknown Origin
Year: 1981
Definitive Version: None
Laurie doesn’t wear a
seatbelt when she drives in the city (only on the highway), and it drives me
nuts. I’ve told her that if we’re in a crash and she dies because she wasn’t
wearing a seatbelt, I’ll hate her forever. She doesn’t care. Well, she cares,
but not enough to change. I’ve stopped bothering her about it.
I’m something of a fanatic
about wearing seatbelts. I like to tell the story of Derrick Thomas. Derrick
Thomas, for those who don’t know or have forgotten, was an All-Pro linebacker
with the Kansas City Chiefs.
Years ago, the SUV that
Thomas was driving to St. Louis for an NCAA Tournament basketball game flipped
and rolled on an icy patch of freeway. One passenger was killed instantly.
Thomas was paralyzed from the waist down and died of a heart attack in the
hospital a couple of weeks later. A third passenger was treated and released
the same day. Which passenger was wearing the seatbelt? It was Thomas.
I’m kidding. Of course, it
was the guy who was treated and released. In other words, no one had to die
that day, but they did because of one little thing that they didn’t want to
bother with.
As you might suspect,
there’s a reason for my fanaticism. Just before the end of my junior year of
high school in 1981, my buddy Jim and I went out for lunch at McDonald’s.
Jim drove, and he drove a
Buick Grand Prix, not quite a land yacht, but a lot of car for a 16-year-old
kid. I don’t think this song was on the radio at the time—more likely it was
something from Back in Black, which Jim played a lot—but it could have been.
Anyway, Jim looked down to change the radio or tape … and didn’t see the car
that had stopped in front of him to make a left turn.
We plowed into it going 30
mph, which meant I—not wearing a seatbelt—plowed head-first into the windshield
going about 30 mph. I wasn’t knocked out, but I when I opened my eyes, I saw
that I had put a huge crack into the windshield. If we had been going faster, I
might have gone through.
Everyone was OK, albeit a
little shaken up. The guy in the car in front of us was an associate at high
school, who ironically just minutes earlier in a general assembly for
student-body government elections for the next year called Jim out by name from
the stage. What’s that about no good deed going unpunished?
Anyway, I never lost
consciousness, but Jim’s Dad was insistent when I went home for the day that I
go to the hospital to get everything checked out, just in case. Mom took me,
and it ended up being a disaster. I wasn’t an emergency case, so we were made
to wait and wait … and wait.
Well, Mom wasn’t having it.
She was asleep when I had come home and wasn’t thrilled to take me to the
hospital even though she did. She certainly was in no mood to wait on a doctor,
so she said, we’re leaving—even though I hadn’t seen anyone yet. I felt OK—I
had a hard head—so I didn’t fight it.
In the parking lot, Mom got
so disoriented about finding the exit that in her frustration, she drove
through a lowered gate, breaking it off. As you can imagine, for someone who
had just been in a pretty decent-size car wreck, that was a little upsetting.
Before long, we were home, Mom was back asleep and I was feeling lucky that all
I had was a bit of a bump on the ol’ pumpkin.
But I never again have
ridden in a car, bus or truck (including a taxi)—even when going around the
block—without buckling up first. I might be hard-headed but not that
hard-headed.
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