This needs a little backstory:
When I was 17 I was in a car accident (my fault, but pretty understandable, it was helaciously slippery driving condictions). I hit head-on with one of my classmate's mom. Going slow, so nobody was hurt, but both cars were totalled.
A year goes by and it's graduation time, and Amy (the classmate) throws a huge graduation party, just about everyone is invited but me. I go anyway.
Late into the evening, her dad, drunk, is giving some other guy a pep talk about not getting into his college of choice (which is where I was going, I was near the top of my class). He was apparently soused enough that he didn't realize I was in the room. he said, "Look at who got in-- Ken, he's basically a screw-up and won't amount to anything. He nearly killed Amy's mom. Look at that whole family." My friends just gave me a knowing and sympathethic look.
At my 15 year HS reunion, I was happy to see that I had outstripped a large number of the fuckers that had more priveledged upbringings than I did, most of whom never movedout the the backwater hole we lived in
And, unfortunately to his credit, nobody else in my family has amounted to much.
