|
2006-04-18 - 12:29 p.m. I just had an encounter with a drunk driver and I wonder if I did the right thing. Just now, as I was driving home from the grocery store, an old and dirty little red car came fishtailing around between me in one lane and a large construction-oriented truck in the other lane and nearly took the side of my car off. He missed by inches and then continued weaving and fishtailing before he finally got himself into a lane. It turned out that he was heading in the same direction that I was, and I ended up behind him at the light. At that point, I could clearly see that he was a very young man or perhaps even a teen-ager, that he had a very large cup of something that he was continuing to drink with great gusto -- and despite the dirtiness of the car I could also clearly read his license plate. At that point, I had a decision, to call the police and report a drunk driver or not. Perhaps he was even aware of what I was thinking, because he suddenly held up his large styrofoam cup through the sunroof so I could see it wasn't a bottle of beer or something. Fine, so it was from the daiquiri shoppe down the way, right? Was I supposed to believe that he was weaving and fishtailing on a bright sunny day because of all the caffeine in his energy drink? Well, I decided not to phone it in. We got a little further, with the young man considerably slowed down by the traffic which kept him in his own lane, and eventually he turned off safely into the next neighborhood, so I think he'll make it home OK. And we all did stupid stuff when we were kids, right? The ones who got caught and got into trouble, it seemed like they were then in a trick bag where they could never turn their life around. The ones who got away with stuff could grow up and put away childish things because they didn't have an arrest record or a medical record.
All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2002-2017 by Elaine Radford
|