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Thanks, Johnny




I had a serious wakeup call at the age of 16. I was in the middle of a run-down suburb at a girl’s house party. I was with a few “friends” from my block that had dragged me out to go make bad choices because the wanted to feel OK making bad choices. The night was proceeding as usual, everyone was getting hammered on whatever booze we could all collectively swipe/con someone to buy. It was right at that point in a house party where the shadier people start trying to do things they think they can blame on being drunk later.

This is the point where I tend to leave and walk home, time had taught me that staying past this point always goes bad. Cops are showing up anytime. As everyone crescendos into drunken yelling, fighting, and groping, I managed to slip out pretty easily. These days I am never missed. The night is nice though, the sudden silence mixes with fresh air and a nice warm wind.

The booze and the isolation start working on me and I start reflecting about my life as I start the long walk to my bed at home. How I have no real friends, how I should be focusing on my future, how I wished someone would at least go looking for me when I decided to leave a party, and how I had no idea how to fix that situation.

I was walking pretty impaired, and basically broadcasting to all these respectable home owners that there was a drunk teenager shambling down the middle of the street, so I opted to cut into the woods until I could find a main road to follow to my town and get home.

I normally walked to a main street I recognized and followed that back. I was fearless and invincible at 16 so the thought of trekking in the dark woods didn’t even give me pause. I cut between two houses towards where I thought the highway was and felt a little more secure for the seclusion.

I was always comfortable in the woods, even with the foreboding shadows and almost no visibility. I embraced the darkness and felt it was more a shield than anything. I was still getting worse as far as being drunk because I had up ended a bottle of whiskey on my way out. I was at that point where you drop out of reality from time to time and kind of look at the world completely stunned.

After a few minutes of crunching through the leaves, I started to see flashes of lights cascading across the tree line. It looked like a space ship to me, but it indicated the highway on the other side. I rarely got lost in the woods, thanks boy scouts, never made any friends but I damn sure can find north. As I exited the last of the mini forest, I saw the highway on the other side of the off ramp.

I bolted across the little street and over the median to get to the side of highway, but as I did I tripped over something I hadn’t seen and went head long into the closest lane of traffic. I felt my head smack against the road hard and skidded, making my skin burn angrily against the night air. When I turned my head, I was blinded by headlights coming at me at 50 miles per hour. In that split second I realized that I was going to die, it was too fast and too close and I wordlessly knew that and went limp.

The world started spinning and somehow the headlights whizzed past my head by inches. I was face down on the grass median and my ankle throbbed in pain. I sat there stunned as the big dodge ram’s tail lights vanished down the highway. After a second I started saying thank you, and I felt a reassuring pat on the back in response. When I turned around to see my saviour though, all I saw was a cross on the ground.

It was about 2 feet tall, flat white, made of two simple boards. I had kicked it out of the ground when I had tripped on it. I picked it up and planted it again around the flowers that were laid there. In big bold black letters it said “WE MISS YOU JOHNNY.”, The numbers on the cross where from today’s date. Later when I looked it up, the paper said that Johnny had been hit by a truck 5 hours earlier.

No one ever believed me, I didn’t really have close friends to give me credit, my parents brushed it off completely. I almost thought I had imagined the whole thing because of how hard everyone had tried to say it was nothing. The only thing no one can explain is how I had a deep purple hand shaped bruise on my ankle for the next week to go with my scraped up face.

Thanks Johnny.

—
Credits to: SmellsLikePennies

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