Tag Archive for drunk

A Plea to My Readers on the Road

PLEASE BE CAREFUL!  A recent tragedy brought home how a couple of non-actions can cause heartbreaking outcomes.  Family of a close friend of mine was driving home from a visit to their dying father in Denver.  An 18-year-old rammed his SUV into the back of their van, causing both vehicles to spin and flip.  My friend’s 3 uncles, an aunt, and a cousin were killed.  The tragedy deepens: my friend’s father had lost one of his brothers a year ago, and now his remaining 3 are gone.  Further tragedy: my friend’s grandfather, under all the stress, had a stroke.

What are the non-actions involved?  One was a common one.  The people killed were stretched out in the van at 3 AM while another person drove, and they, like many of us, stretched out to get more comfortable, then did not re-buckle their seat belts.  The two in the van who kept their seat belts on survived.

The other non-action was on the part of the teen driver who hit them.  He had been drinking and was drunk, and he did NOT give the keys to someone else to drive.  Thus the disastrous accident that will forever touch so many lives.

So, please be careful out there.  Use common sense.  Think of yourself, others on the road, and all those whose lives are a large part of theirs.

Good Fun?

If you don’t laugh, the jokester will shake his head at you and say, “Come on.  It’s all in good fun.”  Yet. the ethnic joke he’s told makes you cringe.   That’s your conscience responding to an attack on the human family.  At that moment, you are inwardly aware that someone’s dignity is being attacked.  Deep inside we know that such put-downs only feed bad feelings or stereotypes, keeping them alive.  They are hurtful rather than healing in our world.

A step toward protecting human dignity is to stop tolerating those insults.  There are two rules in doing this: 1) use a response that is natural and comfortable for you, and 2) make your point but don’t humiliate the person you’re speaking to.  For example, you might say, “That joke makes you sound prejudiced, and I know that can’t be true.”  Or, “My brother-in-law is Irish and he’s not a drunk.”  Sometimes people’s attention just needs to be drawn to what they are actually saying.

Drunk Legislators

Is it okay for your legislators to get drunk and not call Urber, a taxi, or a friend to drive them home?  It is in my state (CA).  Or so it seems.  Our lawmakers have provided themselves with 24-hour-a-day drivers, on stand-by and getting paid (yes, by us taxpayers) to pick them up if they’ve been drinking.  This way, they argue, they won’t get a DUI.

Well, duh!  Do what your constituents do: call that taxi or Urber or friend.

Better still, be grown-ups and don’t put yourselves in that position.  Remember this: we elected you on the idea that you would make reasoned, sober, adult decisions, and you will be up for re-election sometime soon…

 

It’s OK—I was Just Drunk

Hold the coke but lay the booze on me!  Apparently people in Toronto (and elsewhere?) feel doing stupid things under the influence of drugs is bad but it’s fine if done during a drunken stupor.  Especially if you smoked crack cocaine during one of those stupors.

Their mayor, Rob Ford, excused his drug use because he was drunk at the time.  And the people bought it.  His approval rating actually went UP five points when information was released about the incident.  And they’re quite happy, thank you, to have him continue as their mayor.

I guess I’m old fashioned.  I can’t help thinking that a person who is run over by someone under the influence of alcohol is just as dead as if the driver were high on drugs.  Further, I’m not sure I’d trust the judgment of someone who has admitted to what seems to be frequent drunken episodes, and, looking at his excuse for smoking crack, I don’t trust his logic.  But, then, I won’t get a chance to not vote for him.