I wanted to do a post about a news story here in the Bay Area which affected me deeply. It has to do with these three youngsters, all of whom are now dead……….
…..due to this horrific accident.
If you don’t recognize it, that charred, twisted hulk of metal was a Tesla Cybertruck, which is built like a tank and usually looks more like this:
The facts of the case are not out, as this tragedy took place only a few days ago, but based on just tidbits of information and some real-world interpolation, I can pretty much tell you what transpired.
- Four kids – – three boys and a girl – – had been friends for years. They lived in the town of Piedmont, which is a well-to-do suburb in the San Francisco East Bay.
- They all went off to different colleges a little over a year ago.
- Each of them had come home for Thanksgiving to be with their families.
- More immediately, they wanted to see each other, so they went to a friend’s house for a raging party.
- One of the four borrowed his dad’s super-cool, super-bad-ass, Cybertruck. He was guaranteed to be the talk of the party, as other 19- and 20-year-olds gathered around it to check out his sick ride.
- The friends got shit-faced drunk or stoned.
- It was approaching 3 a.m., and the party was ending, so they left.
- The driver of the car was blasted out of his mind and decided to show off, so he went really, really fast.
- Into a tree.
- Then the car burst into flames, since giant car batteries are great for making huge fires, plus they can’t be extinguished.
- One of the iPhones called 911 since it detected that it had been in a crash.
- Someone who saw the crash rushed toward the conflagration and managed to pull out the one person he could, who as far as I know was severely burned but at least alive and in critical care at a hospital.
Those who died, either from the crash itself or burned alive in the car, were Krysta Tsukahara
Jack Nelson
and Soren Dixon.
No one has identified which of the four was the driver, although my hunch is that it’s one of the guys, either a dead one or the one who, as far as I know, survived.
Anyone out there who is a parent knows all too well how your outlook on everything changes once you have kids. Any self-respecting parent would give up their own lives to save any of their kids. So, too, I suspect any parent who has had the agony of losing a child would, at times, wish they were no longer alive to bear the burden.
I certainly count myself in that camp, psychologically and temperamentally speaking.
My first thought when I read about this news wasn’t about the kids. It was about the parents. Because the kids are gone already (well, 3 of them, and maybe a 4th, depending on if he pulls through from being trapped inside what was basically a flaming oven). The agony for the rest of their lives is, for me, unimaginable.
If the kids had been, let’s say, in the twin towers on 9/11, that would be a tragedy, but it would be just a tragedy of loss. What I’ve described above is much worse because, to varying degrees, it’s a tragedy of loss as well as guilt.
Where would the guilt come from? From endless questions to oneself, of course. Why wasn’t I stricter about drinking? Why did I let them go to a party? Why didn’t my kid take an Uber? Why didn’t I set a curfew? And, worst of all, for whatever parents’ kid was the driver……….how am I going to live with the fact that my child is directly responsible for his own death and the death of his friends?
I think it’s also safe to say that the husband and wife that let the kid borrow the Cybertruck will find themselves divorced before 2025 is over.
It’s honestly beyond comprehension. We live in a world in which some crypto douchebag wastes over $6 million so he can eat a banana and still, in an instant, the lives of twenty or so people (the family members) are absolutely turned upside down and, to varying degrees, blown to pieces.
This story has particular resonance for me since these four kids were good-looking, like my kids. And college-aged, like my kids. And from an affluent family in a posh town, like my kids. And athletic, like my kids.
It was, figuratively speaking, a little too close to home.
As the story circulated around, they showed interviews from strangers as well as those who knew the kids. The children were described in universally laudatory terms. They were great kids. They were terrific. In the press release one of the grieving parents issued about their child, they described him as someone who could “light up a room” which, given the nature of the death, made me wince when I read it.
I thought no such things. I was furious with the kids, or at the very least, furious with whoever the driver was. As I said earlier, I’m supposing it was one of the lads, and I’m certain if he had any true awareness of the unspeakable agony he was about to create among so many people, he obviously wouldn’t have had the last few drinks (or joint or whatever was affecting his judgment).
Yet it’s all over in the blink of an eye.
“Affluenza” is very real. I personally know of a very rich family with four kids, one of whom has completely gone off the deep end. He’s really into drugs and, in spite of having every advantage in life, will probably wind up dead before he’s twenty-five. They have been shipping him off to one expensive rehab after another, all over the planet, and I was wondering how this might be addressed in their Christmas card. Well, it showed up, and they described him as “traveling the world.” Yeah, well, I guess that’s one way to put it.
Pray to be spared anything like these parents are going through, and tell your kids, over and over and over again, that if they are ever going to act this responsibly, you’ll just kill them yourself. This isn’t right, and it’s unspeakable what all those families are going through right now, in the midst of a holiday that is all about family and togetherness. It’s simply horrific, and I wouldn’t wish what those parents are going through on anyone.
