The Irrepressible Urge to Die Young

There were seven of them spread out between two cars, and they all were going to live forever; you could tell by the way they drove that little white angels were sitting on their shoulders and babbling fervent prayers to God in a state of near-if-not-already panic.

Boys - or should I say Young Men? It's so hard to tell these days when they all look like children to these ancient eyes, even the ones fully grown and surrounded by their own children. Children with children, indeed.

But these young men were exercising their God-given right to challenge the laws of physics, daring the tires to maintain their grip on the ice-covered road as they bobbed and weaved their way around the slower, tentative clumps of fearful winter drivers. Those of us who have lived nigh on to forty-five seasons carry enough memories of tragedies or near-tragedies to dissuade us from ever casting temptation in the face of natural law; we've seen firsthand the fickle twist of fate and chance that grant another day of life to one fool, and end it all for another. These boys have not lived long enough to learn the proper respect for the immutable probabilities.

The sheer stupidity of it broke me from my stressful reverie; whereas my mind had been occupied with careful analysis of the short patch of road in front of me as my vehicle crawled slowly toward its destination, the suddenness of noise and movement in another corner of reality jarred me into instant awareness, and I looked in the rear-view mirror to behold two cars rapidly approaching from behind with what seemed like missile-like speed. In an instant, they were gone by on either side, and then ahead of me, swerving one way and then the other as they passed all the other cars within view. At one point, one of the cars even left the relative safety of the right-hand side of the road to pass on the left, in the lane reserved for oncoming traffic.

My ears anticipated the crash of metal on metal, and broken glass. But none came.

Odd, but in the instant in which they were close enough to be in plain view, my mind recorded the pertinent facts as though saving up for some future inquiry by an officer of the Law:

"Yes, sir, there were two cars, one was a silver four-door Mercedes Benz, late model, looked two to three years old at most, the other a chocolate-colored Lexus sedan, couldn't have been more than two years old. Four boys in the Mercedes, one in the back seat had a full head of curly hear, nearly an Afro. Three boys in the Lexus, the one in the back was leaning from one side to the other like he wasn't belted in. They all appeared to be laughing and joking with one another. They were all of them looking at each other between the cars, egging each other on, daring each other to take a chance. I'd estimate they were going no less than sixty miles per hour when they passed me. Passed me like I was standing still ..."

Due to the straightness of the road, it was possible to watch them for quite a few moments; they carried the race at least as far as the next big light, a mile or so down the road, but that only slowed them down a second or two, and then they were off and running again, searching for Mr. Death.

Shivers ran through me as I watched it all, and it wasn't so much that I could identify with the feeling of being young and reckless and unacquainted with the nearness of tragedy, although there was a bit of wistfulness in the remembrance of a time when I, too, had been immortal; it was more the thought that my own sons might one day neglect the common sense they'd been granted and the lessons they'd been taught to pursue with their friends the unmoving, uncaring highway that beckons them all with tales of freedom and power and sated desires, and then rolls them around on the ground like dice to see how close to disaster they will come.

God grant them the wisdom to refuse that ride.