I am not Ferris Bueller, let me be clear about that right up front. Now, allow me to explain. A few months after blowing out sixteen candles on his birthday cake, one of my friends obtained his driver's learning permit, which meant he could drive legally only with a supervising adult passenger. But one foggy autumn evening, he took his dad's BMW out for a spin alone ... alone, that is, until he picked up me and another friend. I had no qualms about riding along, and at the time my parents weren't home to stop me. The first (and only intentional) stop for all three of us was the neighborhood convenience store, because nothing hits the spot at eight in the evening on a school night like a half-gallon of Dr. Pepper and a Slim Jim. From there we headed to the foothills, all three of us having tacitly agreed on that trajectory.

Well, that car wanted to go faster than my buddy did, and within fifteen minutes it had rolled over on its roof, with all three of us inside, into a creek bed about forty feet below a switchback in the road. Yes, there was a fire, and yes, I suffered second degree burns on my neck, left ear, and left forearm while pulling myself out of the car. They rushed me and the other passenger (the driver walked away untinged) to the burn unit at the university hospital about an hour away. Three rounds of skin grafts later, you wouldn't even know all this happened to me, as long as I'm wearing a long-sleeved turtleneck and looking to your right.

No, I am not Ferris Bueller. Nor, truth be told, am I the guy with the skin grafts. Nor, for that matter, was I the second passenger. In fact, I wasn't even in that Beamer that night. But three of my friends from school were. All three were absent from homeroom the next morning, but I didn't think much of it until second period, when the stories and rumors started flying around school. By lunchtime everyone had checked the local newpaper's Website and had their facts straight. That Saturday my parents drove me down to the hospital to visit my two friends. It wasn't pretty. Three weeks later both burn victims were back in school.

Every day we hear news stories about people who suddenly lose — or nearly lose — a friend or family member due to a tragic accident. But it all seems so abstract until it finally happens to you. Well, it's all real as concrete to me now. My turtlenecked friend often confides in me how self-conscious he feels in gym class and at the pool, where he can't clothe over his scars. And of course during the summer months he's always exposed. He tells me about the ongoing social fallout from his accident. People who don't know him stare briefly and then look away. Some people who know him avoid him now, as if he were some sort of grotesque monster. And, believe it or not, one group of kids from school have actually made a hobby of bullying him; not to his face, of course — the cowards do it online.

Maybe my friend was at fault for lacking the good judgment to say no to a joy ride. Even if so, he doesn't deserve what he'll no doubt carry around for the rest of his life. I'm not sure what effect all of this will have on me in the long run. What I do know is that, owing to my friend and his unfortunate accident, I am learning to develop a modest virtue called empathy — which I hope to carry around for the rest of my life.