I had just turned 17, precisely 64 days before that fateful 28TH day of February 1983. Basketball season had just finished, and we had a week off before baseball practice would begin. My buddy Todd, who lives in Hawkins Bar with his parents, had been staying at my house since about January 4TH because of an enormous mudslide that had closed highway 299 about 3 miles from his house, and the only other road you could take around the slide had 5 feet of fresh snow on it. So every morning we would take the good ole" "shame train"(as we used to call it back then) to school in the morning and then Todd's Dad would pick us up after school. I remember that it was pretty damn warm that day, around 87 degrees. I can feel the rays beaming down, not a cloud in the sky, which meant for a fast, dusty and oh so quick ride that as perfect for some high speed .road was dry, perfect for high speed.
For some stupendous reason I let my little head do my thinking that deadly afternoon, so instead of riding home with Todd and his Dad, I elected to ride the old "shame train" just so I could scam on this girl named Jessica, and maybe ask her to the prom, because it was already less than a month away. I gave Todd one last glance just before I boarded the "train" and promptly flipped him off for laughing at me because I was actually going to ride the bus home in this sultry, dry heat and not in an air-conditioned car just to get a date for the prom. As I continued up the steps, I stopped and handed Sam (he was the driver) a Quiet Riot cassette tape to blast on the way home, and as I was doing that I immediately began to here almost all of the girls starting to bitch, because they knew that whenever I would ride the bus Sam would play whatever tape I told him too! So I slapped him a "high five", he thanked me for stirring up the controversy, and then he went to the back to take a!.
head count so we could take off.