Michelle

   A couple of months after the breakup with Dena, Jean called me on a Wed. morning and told me that Michelle, whom at one time was Jean’s mortal enemy (Ed. Note: see Sep. 27, 2011) but since became good friends, had gotten into a horrible car accident. Apparently while driving a friend home after a concert her car blew a rear tire while getting off on an exit ramp causing the car to flip several times into a tree. Her boyfriend and the other guy were thrown from the car receiving significant but non-life threatening injuries. Michelle, however was in more serious condition.

  Jean wanted to see her immediately and was going to skip school to do it. She asked what I had planned for the day and I had a college final and work, but I figured I could skip the final and make it back in time for work.

  I picked her up from her school and left. On route it occurred to me that  the location of the accident was upstate in Westchester, not in nearby Westbury. I realized I would be missing work and ended up calling in sick from a Friendly’s restaurant lobby pay phone.

  When we finally got up to the hospital, we met her dad who told us it wasn’t very good and it was worse than we had thought it was. I called Dan and gave him a brief message on his machine. ”Hey, Michelle was in a car accident up in West Chester last night. It was pretty bad. I’ll give you more details when I can.”

of clothes and then to the other hospital to see Michelle’s boyfriend. He didn’t know the extent of Michelle’s injuries which when we asked the doctor his only reply was “well, she’s alive.” The boyfriend was scalped by the back windshield. He had lovely long hair, so seeing him with a shaved head was just weird…

We met up with Michelle’s father at his hotel room and then out to get something to eat when we got back to the hospital. Dan and an entourage of friends were waiting for us. On top of Dan and his entourage, Denver and Matt had come all the way down from Albany. I was shocked Dan even knew how to locate us, but he is pretty resourceful.

  After hours of waiting, Michelle came to, highly drugged up on pain killers she was at least talking. She had no feeling on the left side of her body and there was a plate in her head, but I was happy that she was still with us.

  It was a somber time when we all went to a nearby diner after we left the hospital, but we did manage to convince the waitress that we all converge at that diner once ever 5 years on this very day from all over the country because that place was so special to us.

  Meanwhile, back in the world of high school gossip and innuendo, the story changed. Dena’s mom, who worked in the school offices, told Dena that she had heard that I was driving Jean and Michelle and had gotten into the accident and that I had died. I would love to have seen first hand the game of ‘telephone’ that caused that…

 It would take months of rehabilitation for Michelle to even get partial use of her left arm and she walks with a severe limp, but she got a standing ovation when she received her high school diploma a few months after the accident.