July 4th, 2001

      Picture it. 18 year-old girls parents are out of town for the 4^th of July. She lives on the outskirts of town where the houses do not hug each other. The back yard is large and it provides the perfect setting for a huge bon-fire/multiple keg party. She invites dozens of her friends, and the stage is set.

       I remember that the first person I seen as I approached the already roaring inferno was a kid named Larry Zimmer. It was a pleasant surprise; I hadn't seen him since middle school. He used to live across the street from me in 6^th and 7^th grade. We would walk to school together and smoke cigarettes; we were just wicked cool like that.

        Although we walked to school together, we seldom hung out besides that. His parents were really strict, especially his dad. They didn't like him and his little brother out running the streets. I think I have only been inside his house with him once or twice ever, and it was only for a few minutes because his parents weren't home. He fancied himself as quite the bad-ass back then, I suppose we both did. But I remember one day he came home late and his dad went off on him verbally, right on the front porch. He made him take his earrings out immediately. Apparently, the earrings were a privilege to wear, and breaking a 7 pm curfew meant that he lost them. I watched him tear up a bit as he was removing them. The scene had certainly cost him some street-cred in my book.

       Anyways, we were both 19 now and we both had a bunch of tattoos already. So I suppose we had both continued along our road to rebellion years after the earring incident. It was so good to see him and reminisce about old times. Almost all of the rest of my usual group of friends were on hand as well. Back then, we had a very large circle of friends who would "party it up" almost every single night. There was about 30-40 of us. The majority of the parties would occur at my apartment, so this night was really special. Everybody must have been drinking very heavily that night, because I remember that we kicked the first keg in like an hour and a half. I quickly noted a direct correlation between the amount of alcohol consumed and the size of the fire.

        For the most part, everybody was outside. But there was a few stragglers going in and out of the house from time-to-time. I had been around the fire for the entire time. We were all having a “blast” indeed.

        It was about 3 hours into this epic party when I was looking for Justin Smallze. Somebody told me that they had seen him inside the house.

         Now, the bon-fire was in the back yard, about a hundred yards from the house. So, I refilled my beer cup and began walking towards it. As soon as I got to the door and was about to walk inside the house, absolute chaos erupted.

         All of a sudden I hear a crazy, screaming voice coming from behind me. “Ahhhhhhhhhhhh Danny help me please I’m fucking dying”! 

         I turn around and see Larry Zimmer jumping and screaming in an absolute frenzy. “What dude!? What’s wrong?!” I ask. Just then he does a 180 while still jumping and screaming his head off in pain. I notice that he has almost no skin on his back at all. “Holy fucking shit man! What the fuck?!”, I yelped. It looked like he must have somehow fallen onto the fire. “Ahhhhhhhhh Please fucking help me Danny, please man” he screams!

       My heart started pounding like a piston; I had absolutely no idea what to do. “Pleaseeeeeee call my mom”, he hollers out desperately. “What do I do Danny”?! It was at this moment that I realized that if I didn't do something quick, he was going to be in real trouble. I don’t remember seeing anybody else from this moment on, only chaos.

      I said; “Ok, come on”, and we raced into the house. “Lay down on your stomach”, I hollered at him. He quickly fell to the floor punching and kicking in agony and screaming; “Please call my mommy and daddy, don’t let me die Danny please!” I grabbed a blanket off a chair in the living room and put it under cold water. I didn't know if this was the right thing to do or not, it was simply instinctual. In fact, I still don't know if it was a good idea or not. But anyways, he was flopping, kicking, and screaming in pure agony; “Call my mom please!”

        Now you have to understand the level of desperation in his voice, it was bone chilling. I didn't see how she was going to help him, but he kept screaming for me to do it. So I picked up the phone and dialed the number he told me and handed him the phone. I took the blanket soaked in cold water and I laid it over his skinless back. His mom must have answered because he screamed “Mommy, I’m fucking dying I got burned to death ahhhhhhhhhhhh”! The tone of his voice was simply terror and pain in its rawest form. And then he hangs up the phone. Can you imagine waking up at 2am to that call from your child?

        I obviously knew that she couldn't save him. That's when I realized that I was the only one who could save him. I picked him up with the blanket around him and rushed him out to my car. I sped off like we had just robbed a bank. Unfortunately we were about a 20 minute drive from the hospital. However, there was no driving laws that existed, all bets were off. If I had crashed on the way there I didn't give a shit. Because, I knew that if I didn't get him to the hospital right away he was definitely going to die. I would estimate that I cut that 20 minute drive to about 6 minutes, driving like a mad man. It was the scariest and most intense 6 minutes of my life.

         First of all, I had been drinking heavily for hours. Secondly, all I heard were the same desperate shrieks of a man in absolute agony. “Ahhhhhhhhhhh, I don’t wanna fuckking die Danny please Danny please! Don’t let me die Danny!" He was pleading with me for his life as if I were god. "I just want my mommy and Daddy pleaseeeeeeee! Please Danny just get me my mommy and daddy!” Street cred was a non factor in this situation I assure you. The toughest man in the world would have been screaming for his mommy also. The pain that he was enduring had to be hell on earth. He never stopped screaming so I just drove as fast as I possibly could. Once I hit Airport rd. I had the gas pedal floored. I was going 90mph. 

         Once I got into town I drove straight through red lights and stop signs. I drove the way you would drive in a video game while being chased by the cops. While I was speeding down North Arch St. in J.C., I seen a car ahead performing a K-turn. However, I couldn't slow down in time. So I cut over a drive way and onto the sidewalk. I drove through a couple front yards before going back over the curb and onto the road. All the while it continued to get worse and worse; “I don’t wanna die! Noooooooooo please Danny! I just want my mommy and Daddy! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh, it fuckking killsssssssssssssssss pleaseeeeeee. Don't let me die!”.

       When we finally swung into the round-a-bout out front of Wilson Hospitals emergency entrance, I finally came to a skidding halt. He got out and ran into the ER while I followed behind. He ran right past all the triage and registration desks and straight into the patient areas. He was still screaming at the top of his lungs and still wrapped in the blanket. I seen a bunch of nurses and security guards run over to him. He removed the blanket and I seen the shock in the nurses face when they seen it.

        It was at this very moment that I realized my own dilemma. My car was still running right outside the ER and I had been drinking heavily. The melee had stunned me sober, but I'm sure it wouldn't have mattered. The police would definitely be involved very soon. (In the possible absence of any statute of limitations on a DWI charge, this had all only occurred on an alleged basis) I needed to get my car the hell out of there. Besides, I realized that my help was no longer needed.

         So I quickly ran back to my car, and I drove like a civilian to my house only a few blocks away. I seen police cars flying past me, certainly en route to the ER. Then, I parked my car and ran back over to the hospital. As soon as I got back to the emergency room entrance, a van came flying in. It was filled with a bunch of my friends from the party. For some reason, there was a whole bunch of people who had been burned! They all jumped out of the van and went screaming into the same emergency room, it was pure mayhem. I had assumed that Larry had fallen into the fire somehow, probably horsing around. But considering the fact that all these other burn victims had arrived, I had no idea what the hell could have caused the catastrophe.

        The emergency room was overwhelmed and the staff and security were in a frenzy. We were fighting with them because they were not helping my friends at all. I think there were 6-7 people who had large patches of third-degree burns. However, the staff made some of them wait in the waiting room for almost 30 minutes while their skin was literally burning off. They said that they were full right now and that they had to wait. I began to tear up a bit watching my friends shake in pain while nothing was being done to help them.

         Half of them were treated and released from the hospital the next day. However, Larry, (Who had been by far the most critically wounded) and two others were ultimately shipped to a special burn unit in Syracuse, NY. They were kept there in special contamination-free rooms for months. The risk of infection resulting from these type of injuries is especially high. Therefore, the treatments that they required were extensive.

        We later discovered that one of the drunken teenagers had thrown a can of WD-40 into the bon-fire. It had eventually heated up until it burst. Its lava-like contents had exploded and landed directly on the skin of everyone nearby.

          Larry had to have multiple skin graphs and his tattoos were burned off of his body. I remember going to visit them one time and they had burn wounds bubbled up all over their bodies. Every few days one of these giant puss filled bubbles on their skin would burst. We had to wear special anti-contamination suits just to be allowed to go into their rooms.

         The sight of them alone was very difficult to endure. I cannot begin to imagine the hellish pain they must have endured. Their roads to recovery were all very long and painful. But luckily, they eventually escaped the ordeal with only scars.

        Eventually, the injured teenagers all sued the home owners insurance to pay for medical expenses and pain and suffering. However, for some reason, none of them would ever expose exactly how much money they received. It is rumored that Larry had received around $150,000, and that he blew it all, but I cannot confirm this. He has still never thanked me for what I did for him. And when his parents had arrived at the hospital that night, they were so rude to me.

          

         In case anyone has ever wondered, burnt human flesh smells like toast. The kind you get when you use bread that is too thick for the slot, and so it touches against the heating element as it cooks. Even though it was summer time and I always kept all my windows down, my car smelled like that for 2 months. 

        Drunken teenagers will always exist, and they will always do stupid things. Luckily, my friends and I were fortunate enough to walk away without being blinded or killed. There are a lot of kids who do not receive a second chance. Teenagers will always throw caution to the wind, I just hope they are not stupid enough to throw WD-40 into a fire.