Killing Ourselves In Cars, and Then, Locking Ourselves Up

ABOUT TWENTY FIVE YEARS AGO, my roommate's girlfriend was driving home late at night, stone cold sober, on a dangerous dark but busy highway, when she struck and killed a lady crossing the four laner wearing black, drunk, who never should have been there. My roommate's girlfriend was sentenced to a year in the county jail. Because my roommate was a nice guy, I visited her in jail, which seemed to confuse her. It so happened that the local sheriff was a fellow democrat, for whose election I had striven. Several weeks after the tragedy I happened to run into him at a democratic fundraiser, shook his hand, and mentioned my roommate;s girlfriend, that I knew her, and was convinced of her sincere remorse, and her determine to be a safe driver and productive citizen upon her eventual release, which, I hinted, would be nice to see, because, among other factors, the accident wasn't really her fault. I swear, within two weeks, she was back on the street. Nice sheriff. The sentence I felt was in knowing that, yes, a single citizen can make a difference, if only a small one. In our society, these days, if you get drunk and kill somebody with your car, you're in jail for awhile. funny to think that fifty years ago you could drunkenly drive your vehicle into a ditch, and the cops would laugh, and give you a ride home. My, haven't we gotten serious. Perhaps, too serious. I know a nineteen year old kid who got drunk, drove, and killed his passenger, his fiance. Five years later, he's still in prison. It could, perhaps, be argues that the horrible torment and guilt of losing your fiance was sufficient punishment, but nowadays we simply must have our pound of flesh, with M>A>D>D> breathing down our necks. We Sell alcohol at drive thru window, and run our cars up and down the highways at will. we all have a hand in this. At the very least, go have somebody, a professional, go talk to the kid in jail, chance's are he'll swear by all that he can that he is a changed person, who will always agonize over the loss of his fiance at his own hands. How many people do we really want to keep licked up, for how long, and for what?