by Daniel G. O'Leary

Created on: January 24, 2009   Last Updated: April 26, 2010

"RETURN TO SENDER; From My Parents Did I Come. To My Parents Shall I Go!"

Hi, I'm Andy, and this is my story. It happened when I was in fifth grade. I was 11 (soon to be 12). It was March, and we had just had a late snowstorm the week before Easter Vacation. The snow had melted quick and was gone by the first day of vacation, "Good Friday". Back then (mid '60s), they were using massive amounts of sand on the local roads whenever there was snow. When the snow melted, the sand on top of the pavement was as dangerous as the ice in winter.

I had a newspaper route, and on Fridays I had to collect payments. Some of my neighbors were going up-state for the Easter Vacation, so I had to rush to collect before they pulled out of their driveways and left (I had to hand in money Saturday Mornings to my boss). Since school was closed, my best friend's Mom, Becky Adams, had invited me to accompany them to see a new "Disney" movie in the theater. I was psyched. My best friend, Brian Adams, offered to help me collect my payments from our neighbors so I'd be done in time to make the movie.

After we finished "our block (Brian lived next door to me), we rode our bikes up our block (steep hill), and went around to the next block. The Kellys were just getting ready to pull out of their driveway when we rounded the bend (they were the last ones I had to collect from). I yelled to them, and they waited for us. They paid. They left. I put the money away in my pocket, and then Brian and I decided we would race back to his house. He would go back the way we came. I would go "the other way" (down this super steep hill on this block with a super sharp bend in the road at the bottom, and then around to our block).

"Ready, set, GO!" As we sped out of the Kellys driveway, we each made our turn (he went up, I went down). As I was going down, I looked back towards him and shouted; "I'm gonna beat you!" As I turned back (now half way down this monster hill going a thousand miles an hour or so it seemed), right in front of me was a parked car by the curb, "BAM!" I had tried to brake, and to turn away, but the sand prevented traction. My bike hit the car square in the front, I flew over the roof of the car and impacted the trunk-hood, head first. That was it for me, I was out cold! What follows is a neighbor's account of what happened next (she, Mrs. Smith, had been looking out her front window just by chance when I ran into "her" car).

Mrs. Smith said I slid off the trunk and my head impacted on

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