You look like you got hit by a Mack Truck!

I always remember this school-yard taunt from mean kids. The implication was “you’re so ugly you look like you got hit by a Mack Truck”. I never thought much of the taunt until the day I actually got hit by a Mack Truck.

Looking back, it was incredibly lucky that I did not die in that accident, seeing as though I was driving a 1972 Toyota Corolla at the time. But I didn’t and the story now has humorous aspects that are worth telling.

I was living in Kansas City, going to college and I was about 18 years old. A childhood friend from the town I grew up in was also living in KC at the time. Shortly before the incident, my Kermit-The-Frog-Green, 1972 Ford Pinto (the kind that exploded when you got hit) had started on fire and was out of service. This is how I ended up in the old Toyota, a borrowed car from one of my room-mates.

The childhood friend, Jerry, came to me and asked for a ride the 40 miles to downtown KC. He had apparently gotten drunk and lost his car the previous weekend and the car had been towed to an impound lot downtown. As I worked 6pm to 2am in the datacenter of a bank in downtown KC, I was the likely candidate for the ride to retrieve his car.

We drove down to where we thought the impound lot was and in the process got very lost. We pulled off on what we thought was the freeway exit near the impound lot and proceed a bit, soon determining this was not the correct way. I looked in my mirror seeing nothing and proceed to do a U-turn. The last thing I saw was a Mack Truck similar to the one in the picture above.

We were both very lucky. The fully-loaded truck hit us broadside at an estimated 60MPH. The truck tore the engine completely off the car as the rest of the Corolla did a 720 degree spin. The force was so great, I broke my right collarbone.

The ambulance came and they offered me a ride to the hospital. I was very poor at the time and obviously in shock and said no. What a mistake that was. The police didn’t explain to me that the alternative was to be arrested for reckless driving and a spell in a holding cell.

Next thing I knew, I was in jail with a broken should with a bunch of prostitutes and other miscreants. I had one phone call and I called work to tell them I wouldn’t be in that day…