Daily Egyptian
Fall '03 Edition
Think about your actions
Daily EgyptianHe hops into the car. The beer is still fresh on his breath. Down the street is a party. It is just three blocks away, so there is no possible way anything can go wrong, he thinks.
He leans his seat back and reverses out of the parking lot, barely missing the two girls who are crossing the lot to their cars, and screeches off. At the first red light he stops. Both hands on the wheel, seatbelt fastened, he sees the green light and there he goes.
He pulls up safely to the house. Then two hours and eight shots later at 3 a.m., he stumbles into the car once again. He puts the key in the ignition. At the same time he blacks out. Next thing he remembers he's laying on his bed, fully clothed. It's morning.
His friends badger him about his night out.
"Man, you were the man last night," they say. "You had the ladies eating out of your hand. You must have had 12 shots from this one girl's navel.
"How'd you get home?"
He thinks. "How did I get home?"
The car is parked out front. No visible damage to the exterior. "I told you I drive twice as good when I'm drunk," he laughs.
More than 17,000 people die each year from alcohol-related accidents. Five hundred thousand sit with the memory of the drunken driver forever sketched in their lives.
Why are we breathing a sigh of relief? Were we too proud to have a designated driver or call a cab? Maybe we had to feel in control?
Try walking. Nothing says you're more in control than the use of your own legs. Ask one of those people in wheelchairs after being a victim of drinking and driving. They will tell you.
Tell Harold Dennis he could control the burns on his face. Ask Janey Fair about her daughter Shannon; did she have power to control her life? Does Jacob Pearman have the control of choosing when his brother, John, will sit next to him again?
Keep telling yourself they're just numbers, just statistics, a distant number with no face, no family and no life. You don't know them, so why should you care?
Or maybe you want to explain to 15-month-old Trey Dennis why his father has scars on his face.
Why the weeklong series?
Blackouts are easy to forget. Twelve shots seemed like eight and a couple of beers turned into 15.
Wake up, Carbondale. Wake up, America.
The war is on our highways. The war is on our families.
Every day we are bombarded with advertising depicting the image of a sexually explicit lifestyle, with money at our every whim, or even comical situations in alcohol advertising, followed by a "drink responsibly" disclaimer in small print that appears for a second and vanishes.
Two words, compared to 17,000 lives. Two. 17,000.
The more the number is printed, the more you seem to turn away. And the 17,000 are the yearly deaths. There are still 500,000 injuries, 500,000 whys, 500,000 wheelchairs and 500,000 mothers left having to wait hand and foot on a child, a father, a sibling.
There are 500,000 reasons to walk, 500,000 reasons to catch a cab.
Stare at it, head on. Stare at it like Larry Mahoney stared at a bus head on as he took 27 lives.
Staring at the television ads are easy, looking at the girl across the bar is easy, but try preparing yourself to talk to Harold Dennis without making him feel as if you can't stop staring.
Or maybe we take a long hard stare at ourselves because that is where the problem starts.
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Last update: Thursday, December 4, 2003 at 7:51:26 PM
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