"Some Days You Just Can't Win"

It was the last day of my junior year of high school and—read the next five words with a southern drawl—I had myself a problem: I didn’t have a ride home.

Important background information: At this point in my career as a human being—I was seventeen—I did not yet have a license, so I was one of those guys who should of had their license, but didn’t.

Failed the driver’s license test three times.
Three times.

Anyway, so having no license—three times?—I was almost always escorted via automobile to and from school by either of my good friends, Matt Mazzoni—Mazzoni!—or James B. Downs. How-ev-er, because of the way our exam schedules worked out, neither of the lads chauffeuring services were available, so I got done—improper English—should be “I finished”—my last exam and the ride-home situation was a Ted Nugent song and a free-for-all.

Okay, something I should of mentioned earlier: my—like I own it?—high school was/still is in the city—actually, the ghetto. “City of Compton/City of Compton”—and young men ages thirteen to eighteen who were, and hopefully still are, members of the human race matriculated, and again still do, from all over, some from another state, New Jersey, to aforementioned school, little old me hailing from the a suburb a good thirty minutes away, and so it was a take-what-you-could-get situation and I snagged a ride with a kid I kinda know. But guess what?—That’s what—We’re not going home; the kid and his buddy, who’s riding shotgun, have some booze in the trunk because they’re, and everyone else in the car, going to a shady spot where people drink.

So we were drivin’ along—sing this part jovially in your head: la, di, dat, dat, da—and the driver, who’s driving way too fast and also not paying attention, BOOM! rear ends this car and being an idiot and not wearing my seatbelt, I fly forward, slamming my forehead against the back of the driver’s headrest, and then snap back and hit the back of my head against my own headrest. It hurt.

Panic. We just got in an accident, and we’re all underage, and there’s booze in the vehicle.

Whatta we do?

Gotta talk to the other driver. Gotta call the cops. The alcohol: Gotta get it out of the car. Hide it somewhere.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, driver turns back to me.
“Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
“I don’t know. I think so.”
“Just say you’re all right to the cops.”

Friend hides the beer, which is concealed in a paper shopping bag, behind a tree on the side of the road; cop shows up; the whole rigamarole.
“We’re safe to drive home.”
Cop leaves and clearly we don’t go home, but instead the friend grabs the bag, we pull away, and then go to the shady drinking spot where I don’t drink because I don’t drink at this point in my life, but still hang out, and somewhere along the line for some reason I can’t remember the kid leaves, or maybe, and understandably, I don’t want to continue on my journey home with him and I am again sans ride home and it has started to rain.

Nugent is playing “Free-For-All” again.

I end up squeezing into this other kid’s car, a Buick if memory serves, and there’s like six people in this car, me on someone’s lap, and we drive back to the new driver’s hometown, all of which the other passengers are denizens of, and not unlike Dio’s 1990 album, The Last In Line, I’m the last in line. Oh yeah, and it’s pouring by now. A deluge if you will; and if you won’t, who cares? Now I live only three miles away, about a ten-minute drive round trip, but my new driver has already driven thirty minutes or so and apparently that’s his absolute limit. It’s POURING out and this guy tells me he’s not driving me home. The train stops here.
“Are you serious? I only live like three miles away?”
“Nah, I’m not doin’ it.”
Pause. It hangs in the air. He’s serious.
I ask him again and again get denied. I can’t believe it, but HE IS NOT budging, so I say forget it, get out of the car, start walking, and after a mile or less I’m completely soaked—everything: my body, my clothes, my book bag, my books and notebooks, my shoes, my new leather purse. Everything. And I’m also walking on this small grass hill because God forbid there be a sidewalk, and so all I’m trying to do is not slip down it and get killed by a car when GOOSH! a car zooms by a huge puddle and a wave of water nails me. It’s like something out of a movie and I laugh because it’s perfect. And when I finally get home, I take a shower to warm up and stave off pneumonia, and the next day I awake to find I have whiplash, which goes away after a few days.

Whatever. At least it was summer.