"Buckle up."
Christie Baughman never failed to deliver that order to her son Tony whenever he slid into a car, either as a driver or a passenger.
"It didn't matter if I rode with him or he rode with me," she said Friday. "If I was in the car with him, he was going to buckle his seatbelt."
It's what mothers say. Your mother. My mother. All mothers. All the time. It's how they're wired. And aren't we lucky for that.
But on Jan. 27, on a Friday afternoon in which so much else was swirling through Tony's 18-year-old head -- the car show up the road in Cleveland that he and friend Logan Fowler were taking in; the Silverdale Baptist Academy basketball game they planned to attend later that night; the 98 he'd made on a test that day at Silverdale (a rarity for an average student such as Tony); the girl he planned to meet after the game -- well, lost in all that excitement were his mother's seatbelt orders.
And because life is sometimes far more fragile than fair, Tony Baughman paid the ultimate price for not buckling up.
Having just dropped his younger sister Grace off at their father Rusty's medical practice in Ringgold (Christie also worked in her husband's office), Tony and his buddy weren't eight miles up I-75 near the East Ridge exit when Baughman's Honda Civic crashed, flipped four times and propelled a beltless Tony through the windshield.
"The first thing that went through my mind when they called me was that I hoped he didn't suffer," Christie said. "From what I've been told, he died instantly."
Conversely, Fowler -- who was wearing a seatbelt -- suffered no physical injuries except for a broken hand.
And that's where the worst day of her life begins and ends for Tony's mother.
"I've had some real serious discussions with my daughter about this," she said. "I've said I can't go back there. I can't change anything. I do everything I can not to dwell on it."
But she also wanted the memory of her oldest child to live forever. Yes, she still had Rusty, 16-year-old Ryan and 12-year-old Grace to love and cherish.
"And I'm thankful every day for that," she said. "But there's no describing losing a child. It's like having one of my limbs amputated. You adjust, but for a long time it still feels like they're there. And your life is never the same again."
She soon realized, however, that she was far from the only one determined to remember Tony in a special way. His senior classmates were hurting as much as the Baughmans. They wanted to organize a fundraiser to honor him. They decided to stage a 5K road race -- the TB5K: A Walk For Safety Awareness.
Saturday morning at Camp Jordan Park, the early morning skies appropriately misty, more than 300 people showed up for the TB5K, nearly all of them wearing race-day T-shirts of various styles and colors.
"It's unified us as a school," said Logan Herring, a close friend who wore a red T-shirt that had nicknames for Tony stamped on its back: T-Bombin, T-Money, Nony (Grace's choice), Thug-Thizzle, T-Swagg.
"It's made us more safe. A lot of us didn't buckle up before. I used to think it was uncool. Now it's cool."
The latest numbers from the Governor's Highway Safety Office are icy cold. More than 330 Tennesseans have lost their lives in traffic accidents since the first of the year, up 26 percent from 12 months ago.
The worst demographic among those victims? Males ages 18 to 34.
Said Kendell Poole, director of the GHSO, last week: "They're the ones that are most likely to offend. They're the ones most likely not to wear their seat belt, and they're the ones to most likely drink and drive."
Yet as much as safety played a role in the Silverdale seniors' desire to honor Tony, his kindness, friendship and personality were far bigger motives.
"He'd bring me a blue Powerade every morning," Laura Locklear said. "I wouldn't even ask. There aren't words to describe how thoughtful he was."
"We called him our other son," said Logan's father, Ed, who coached Tony on elite soccer teams throughout the area after he made the SBA varsity as an eighth-grader.
"He was just one of those special people. You could be having the worst day and he'd bring a smile to your face. He didn't believe in people being unhappy. He was always bringing my wife a 32-ounce raspberry sweet tea from Sonic. He was such a nice young man -- would have done great things."
Instead, great things have been happening because of him since his death. Because Tony died two weeks before he was supposed to deliver his senior speech, sister Grace gave the speech he'd mostly finished.
"There wasn't a dry eye in the house," Ed Herring said.
To back up Logan Herring's words about the new focus on seatbelts, Locklear said, "I used to try to be buckled up by the first traffic light. Now I'm buckled before I pull out of the driveway. We're doing this in hopes that something like this never happens again to a school or a community."
In the final minutes of his life, as he was about to pull out of the parking lot at his father's office, Tony stopped his car and told Fowler, "I'll be right back. I want to tell my parents goodbye one more time."
It is one of those moments that makes you revisit every thought you've ever had about a higher power.
But in Christie's mind, there is also the presence of the color purple, a color of spiritual rebirth in the Christian faith.
"His favorite color," said Logan Herring, who encouraged using purple on everything from posters to T-shirts to souvenir water bottles for Saturday's event.
"I've had purple irises coming up in my yard all spring," Christie Baughman said. "We've lived there 13 years, and that's never happened before."
But it's a tiny plastic purple penguin that's brought the Baughman family the most comfort on this most uncomfortable of Mother's Days.
"It was just a cheap plastic toy, but Grace had given it to Tony and he kept it in his car," Christie said. "After the accident, she started asking about it every day. She wanted to know that it was with him when he died."
Finally, 10 days after the wreck, Christie and Rusty summoned up the courage to visit the crash site. They looked everywhere for the purple penguin but couldn't find it.
"There was the orange paint they'd sprayed around where the car landed," she said. "I was crying my eyes out. I looked around one last time, and there was the penguin right there on the concrete in perfect shape. I believe God put that there to let us know Tony's in a better place. I now have a sign every day to let me know my son's OK."