Nike Headband

            We walked outside only to walk into a flood of anxiety, well, only me.  It occurred to me at that moment that I had lost my Nike headband.  It was lost, gone forever.  “Dude, Cameron I need to go buy a Nike headband.”  Without question he replied, “Yeah yeah no problem.”  Everyone on the team wore a Nike headband, and me being the youngest I didn’t want to look lesser then I already was.  I wanted to be a part of the crew.  Cameron knew this and graciously accepted my appeal to go out of the way to purchase one.

We never knew how to lose.  My friends and I in the ward were always the most tenacious when it came to church basketball.  My favorite player on the team was my older brother.  He was everyone’s favorite, and everyone knew he was the meanest dude on the court.  I always trusted him with the ball.  If anyone ever got rough with me he was very quick to defend me.  My brother and I had played with our friends growing up for years, which gave us a favorable advantage every season.  We had played hard and made it to the championship game.  We never missed a basketball game, but that particular day would force us to miss the important game. 

            It was six o’ clock on a snowy November night.  During the month of November we had church basketball.  I was a fourteen-year-old boy in the teachers’ quorum.  That meant that I was playing with kids much older than I was, two of them were my older brother Cameron and his friend Micah.  They were both seniors in high school and priests in the priest quorum respectively.  Our ward had a trend as a basketball team.  We would always wear Nike headbands with the Nike symbol above our right eyebrow with the Nike symbol upside down.

            I was feeling very exuberant walking out of Fred Meyer with my new headband.  As we were walking out to Cameron’s old beat up car with its dented in doors, we talked about what songs we were going to listen to, to pump us up for the game. That particular song would be the demise of our day.  We all got in the car and started to race to the game, we didn’t want to be late.  The car was hurling towards the game at forty-five miles an hour.  Micah couldn’t quite figure out how to work the radio and iPod at the same time (Micah never did have an iPod).  The system on the car radio was so intriguing with its changing colorful lights that I myself was getting sucked into the black hole.  Nothing outside existed, until I looked up.  Meanwhile, Cameron started to help Micah with getting a song to work on the iPod so we would get pumped up for the game.  Cameron was in the driver seat, Micah in the front passenger seat, and me in the back seat.  I wanted to be part of the conversations they were having, so I scooted myself kind of to the front in-between them to feel a little more included.  All this time I realized that nobody was looking at the road; not even me for the distracting neon lights inside the car.  I looked up only to meet two shiny red, and because of the distance, very scary lights.

            We were going forty-five miles an hour toward a stopped car in front of us.  I knew we were going to crash; it was inevitable.  There was no time to put on a seat belt, not for any of us.  The red taillights were so big and bright that it engulfed the entire car I was in.  The black hole was now a red hole.  Yet, I was the only one to see that we were about to meet those taillights with a very vicious impact.  I couldn’t slam on the breaks for Cameron, because I was in the back middle seat.  There was only enough time for me to yell, “Cameron!”  As I yelled his name I wedged myself in-between the back seat and the driver seat.  I hugged Cameron’s seat as tight as I could to prevent getting tossed out of the window dash.  I clenched my mouth, and squinted my eyes shut.  For some reason I thought it could have been over so I decided to peak across the right shoulder of the chocolate milk stained seat.  At that same instant I was violently hurled towards the front of the car and yet still managed to hang on to the seat.  On impact the car hit so hard that the back tires came up like the legs of a bucking bronco.  When they came back down was when I got tossed with such ease from almost hitting the dash to ending up in the trunk space.  We were all in so much shock but at this point I was the only one in the car that knew what had happened. 

            I quickly asked everyone if they were all right.  Cameron didn’t reply, only talking to himself stating how much trouble he was in.  I thought to myself, “how am I going to calm him down?”  I then grabbed Micah’s arm to get a good look at him, he told me he was ok in a dazed mutter.  The door was crunched so bad as if it were crumpled paper that I had to kick my way out.  When I got out of the car, to my despair I saw four more cars in front of ours, smashed.  I thought to myself, “Did Cameron start this five car pile up?”  As this thought crosses my mind I looked at the dash of Cameron’s car window where Micah was sitting.  To my alarm I saw a bubble protruding from the window the size of Micah’s head.  His head had shot through the window, due to not being fastened by a seat belt.  Immediately I rushed over to him, and before I could get there he shrieked, “My face is bleeding!”  His face had many lacerations from the glass of the window. 

            When all of the flashing lights surrounded us a fireman took a look and Micah and told us we needed to take him to the hospital.  All of our parents arrived with great relief that we were all in one piece.  Shirley (Micah’s Mom) came running over to his side with a bloody towel on his face scowling at him for not wearing a seatbelt.   She later said that we had been watched over by angels that night.  I believed her.

            I still wanted to go to the basketball game, but instead we went with Micah to the Emergency Room.  All the while I was thinking, “Cameron didn’t handle any of that well at all.”  All he did was stand there with his hands on top of his head.  All this time I wanted to be so much like him, and in one instant put Micah’s life and mine at risk.  I’m the one who was trying to be calm during the whole thing with the lady police officer telling us how much trouble we were in.  Fireman telling us we needed to take Micah to the hospital.  I felt like I had to delegate the whole thing until my parents got there.  I thought to myself, “Am I becoming an equal to Cameron?”  What does someone have to do for you to realize they’re not as Superman as you thought?  When in reality there’s a day we all see each other as equals.  As I shook my head clear of those thoughts Micah was ready to leave.  We all got into my parents’ car to drive home from that awful night.  My mom promptly stated with a chuckle, “Put on your seat belts.”