Out to lunch with our college age Goddaughter, we listened to a lot of stories. We had a great time and are so delighted with all her achievements. But some of her stories were about parties with too much drinking and invulnerable, immortal young adults insisting that they could all drive by themselves because no one has died yet. No one has died yet? We’ve probably got 50,000 people living in our valley, and that includes the residents “up on the hill” (the state prison). Every weekend we rack up a dozen or so drunk driving arrests. With a little luck, and on first offense, they only have to spend a night or two in jail on charges of DUI, pay a hefty fine and attend the mandatory classes. If they are a little less lucky, they only kill themselves, but mostly they kill someone else. Then it’s no longer drunk driving, it’s vehicular homicide, and our judges are not very lenient. But what’s a prison term to the life long guilt of knowing that you are a killer? What’s a prison term to the ones no longer living and the families who must grieve for the rest of their lives? What’s this ‘no one has died yet’ stuff? I’ve spent enough time working with young adults, and remembering my own youth, to know that my outrage is just the nagging of an ‘old man’ whose words can be easily ignored. I never met a drunk driver yet who meant to do any harm, and especially not to the ones they loved best. They were only having a little fun, just harmless fun. I wonder if it would make a difference if they could come, which they can’t, with me and the coroner as we call on the wife, mother, husband, or father to tell them that their beloved is dead because of a drunk driver.
That culture develops in great part from the environment around it is a common idea from the ancient Greeks to now. Wine tasting party anyone?
Transplant season,That is what the period between the month before graduations and the month after school starts up is called. That is the time in a lot of healthy young organs become available. Youth, indestructible youth, strong, fast, yet so tender. How can they appreciate and value what us older persons do not value or treasure? Cannon fodder and backs to be broken does not count as treasure. They ache with the desire to escape the fate we have accepted, cogs, respectable, quiet, hypocritical cogs. our safety scares them, the cost appears too high, 20 years of life, and 60 years of dying.There was a man once who showed another way, we nailed him to a tree.
amen
CP – you are fortunate to have such gifted readers. Their comments add a very nice icing to your tasty blog comments…..although, today\’s is so sobering (pun not intended) and frightening to hear a young woman who is responsible (we believe) knowing that she might well be the sober victim who is wiped out by a drunk driver!!