Matt Sullivan
The Night My Life Changed Forever
My life changed forever in the late evening hours of February 20th, 2011. It was Presidents’ Day weekend and my mother and I had traveled down to Washington, D.C. to do some college visits. It was a perfect opportunity to get away from the city of Philadelphia and get a little vacation, while still being rather productive. At this time, I was still of the mindset that I wanted nothing to do with Philadelphia after I graduated high school; all I really wanted to do was get away so I wouldn’t have to deal with my family and be too close to home. I was still rather naïve and really lacked true perspective about things such as tuition costs and the logistics of traveling to and from college. I was very raw when it came to college decision making.
The weekend had been pretty normal, with most of the time spent walking around college campuses and hearing various admissions officers and professors pitch their programs to us as if each school were the number one school in the nation. Colleges have the ability to make prospective students think they could spend the rest of their lives on their campuses and never feel any desire to leave. (Now, as a college student myself, there are few things I appreciate more than being able to leave campus every so often and soak in the comfortable, welcoming feeling that comes with being in my own bed. I quickly came to realize that there are certain things about home that a college campus can never reproduce.) After visiting American University, the final stop on my short college tour, my mother and I decided to grab some dinner nearby at the Cheesecake Factory. Over dinner, we discussed the colleges we had seen that weekend. Georgetown, we both agreed, was really beautiful, while American was thoroughly underwhelming for the both of us. One of my earliest criteria was to be near a big city, but not directly in the middle of one. Though both universities were within the borders of Washington, American had a decidedly urban feel to it; the buildings had a more modern stone architecture and the dorms had a high-rise feel to them. Georgetown, on the other hand, had a completely opposite atmosphere; the buildings were older, the campus was grassy and had trees, the neighborhood felt quiet and suburban.
As we worked our way through our dishes, me with fish and chips and my mother with a much healthier looking chicken dish, our conversation switched to another topic, completely unrelated to college and my future as an academic. This conversation centered on one question: “Should we stay over tonight?” The time was approaching 9 p.m., and Philadelphia is not really close to Washington D.C. If we decided to drive home, we might be there by midnight, if nothing terribly catastrophic occurred on the way there. I was strongly against driving home, partially because I really like staying in hotels and partially because I didn’t want to be on the road so late at night. However, my mother is a school teacher and she needed to get back as soon as possible to mark papers for the students who would be eagerly awaiting word on how they were performing. High school students can be very in-your-face when it comes to those kinds of things, almost a little combative at times. I understood, and reluctantly relented on my stance to remain in Washington an extra night.
When we left the restaurant, we went past a relative’s house and then quickly made our way towards the highway to begin the long drive home. As we entered the highway, an unmistakable white powder began to lightly coat the car: it had begun to snow. In my mind, I had only thought: “Why didn’t we stay over?” but aloud I voiced an entirely different opinion: “Maybe it will pass quickly…” I knew that my mother wasn’t entirely thrilled with the idea of driving home in snow, but I know very few people who possess a stronger sense of perseverance than she does; there was almost no way we would stop now. As we continued to make our way north towards home, the snow did not subside, and though it was not a very heavy snow, there was constant precipitation coating the windshield and the hood for some time now. It was also just beginning to cover the roadway, though not nearly enough to call for anybody to hit the panic button just yet.
About an hour into the drive, things began to get a little hairy on the road. The road was starting to get a little whiter, and the small reflectors that dot the highway were becoming more and more important for driving safety. A little under a year earlier, my mom had bought a car with four-wheel drive, exactly for situations like these and now she was eager to put it to good use. Cars around us were beginning to struggle some with the conditions, but so far our Mercedes was handling the roads just fine. While many of the cars around us were driving far too fast, clearly in a hurry to get home before the weather got worse, we were driving slower than ever. The snow had begun to fall a little harder, and it warranted extreme caution. Several cars were sliding every which way and were noticeably struggling to keep control, overcompensating with their brakes to keep from causing a chain collision. This situation continued for almost two hours, our car making slow but steady progress towards our destination. By this time, we should have been home, but instead we were still struggling to get through the state of Delaware.
After about four hours of driving at least, we made it to the Delaware--Pennsylvania border. Making it to this point was like making it to the light at the end of the tunnel. It was as if a switch had suddenly been flicked, and snow began to slow down. The road was still coated with the white stuff and it was still slippery, but it was noticeably better on the Pennsylvania side of the border. Other than the cars still struggling with the slippery roads, things were starting to look up in a positive direction; it seemed as if we had successfully navigated the treacherous drive. Of some worry, however, was a white 1990s model Acura coupe that was having noticeable difficulty driving in a straight line ahead of us. For as long as I had been paying attention to it, it had been weaving into and out of its lane, almost as if the driver was intoxicated. Luckily, there were very few other vehicles on the road, so it had not yet been punished for its reckless driving. The driver was clearly driving too fast, and he or she clearly did not care. At this point, though, I was rather tired and not really interested in much else other than going to sleep. I had decided to lay my head back and catch a little rest, hoping that when I woke up, I would be outside my house safe and sound. I closed my eyes and began to drift off into sleep and then I heard a “Woah!” and I opened my eyes in a flash. What I saw before me was beyond belief: the white Acura was sideways in our lane, no more than 20 feet ahead, not even moving. My heart began pounding in my chest. We were still only traveling about thirty miles per hour, but it felt like one hundred. Before I knew it there was a loud, distinctive crunch as my upper body was violently shaken forward and suddenly caught by my locked seatbelt. Our car skidded to a halt, stopped only by the gray metal guardrail. The white Acura spun around, now facing south on the north facing highway. Quickly, the driver threw it into gear and hurried over to the shoulder. In the background, I heard “911, what is your emergency?” but even if I wanted to react I couldn’t. My seatbelt was still locked, my door unable to be opened because of the guardrail next to it. I was nervous and worried, not really knowing what my next move should be.
When I was able to get my bearings, I turned around to see the driver of the other car briskly walking towards us, while the passenger, whose side we had hit with our car, had her door open and was screaming furiously at us, which was the least of anybody’s worries. At that point, I thought to myself, “Okay, maybe I can get out now and start to move around.” But, as if getting hit once wasn’t enough, suddenly that deafening crunch was back and louder than ever. A truck had gone hurtling past, close to the maximum speed limit of 65, and hit the white Acura, spinning it around to face forward once more. Though I wasn’t in the white Acura, I was thoroughly frightened and I really had no idea what to think. Thankfully, however, nobody in the other vehicle was seriously injured. Stunned might be a better word to describe their feelings. To that point, it was the scariest moment of my life. I didn’t want to get out of the car, even when I knew it was safe. Suddenly, there were cops and an ambulance and tow trucks and there was nothing I wanted to do more than to just curl up in a ball and forget that the day had ever happened.
When I say this day changed my life, I say it for many reasons. For one, I sustained a concussion in the accident, one that went undiagnosed and has caused me to have chronic migraines ever since. I was forced to miss almost three months of school my senior year due to these migraines. They continue to bother me to this day. My mother suffered whiplash injuries to her neck and back, injuries that continue to bother her to this day. Both of us spent months in physical therapy. Second, it forever changed my perspective on driving. You always hear that it doesn’t only matter what you do on the road, as it is really the drivers around you who determine how safe you are while driving. I never really believed that until this fateful day. Now I know, for a fact, that nobody is more in control of your destiny on the roadway than the drivers in the other cars around you. Third, there is not a day that goes by where I don’t think about that fateful night. I have flashbacks every day when I close my eyes, and whenever I hear about or see an accident on the road, I hear that deafening crunch just as loud as ever. Fourth, it really made me realize the importance of life and of family. I decided that the best possible thing I could do for myself and for my family was to stay near home. It occurred to me that maybe it wasn’t so important to get as far away from Philadelphia as possible. Though it did not play a major role in my choosing of a school, it has never left my mind.