Drunk Driving

About two weeks ago, I did not have second period because of an assembly about drunk driving. That was, at best, uneventful. With a mom whose daughter passed away making speech reading a prepared paper and with some random ladies using scare tactic. After that, my mind did not change even a bit. Well, let's say I am a not a drinker and I don't drive in the first place. In short, the assembly isn't doing the job i want it to have done.

First of all, as i mentioned before, the assembly featured a mother whose daughter passed away two years ago. She talked about how gorgeous and social she was, and how she tried to be in the group. In order to do so, she had to do something more than being attractive. I am pretty sure she is, and I understand how not being "in the group" sucks. Well, she took up drinking and partying to be in the group. her mother knew all that. WEll, guess what she did, nothing. Then on the fateful night, she drunk drove and died.

I empathize and sympathize with the mother. However, if the effect of that part of the presentation is to prevent drunk driving, it is a pretty bad job. The cause of the problem, or at least part of it, is that the mother did not do a good job talking to her daughter. She never did talk to her face to face. When she did, right before she went out, the conversation lasted for less than an minute and the daughter was pissed. She drove away anyway. What would a responsible mom have done? Well, suspend her car insurance, have a daughter to mom talk, ground her for drinking, or just talked to her daugher's friends. there are many ways to solve the problems. In fact, the essential part is that the daughter was breaking the law by engaging in drinking. She did nothing. As an audience, I can't sympathize with the fact that she made such mistakes. And she actually tried to lecture us..... Well, there is no authority.

Then a friend of the victim came to speak too. Most of the speech was negleiable. However, the ending was interesting. She said, "I am not saying that you should not have fun. You are high schoolers. you should have fun. But just don drink and drive."

That part left me dumbfounded. What the heck was that? It is ok to break the law, but just make sure you don't kill yourself over breaking the law. What kind of a message is it sending? Drinking is a prevalent culture in high school. However, in a school assembly, a former public school student endorsed drinking....I was....I didn't know what to say, what to comment.

Then they sat aside. Some people who worked with victims of drunk driving took over and started the real presentation---- bloodbaths, the scenes after the accident, the broken victims wrapped in think bandages, and last but not least, their grieving parents. It sure did scare the crap out of me. However, they concern the victims themselves. It is not the best approach either.

I personally think that if someone drunk drives and gets himself injured, I would say "sux for you," but I would not grieve for him, or feel sadness for him. Everyone, you may call me a callous and cold person, but think about it. Who got him into the accident, him and only him. He did it himself. breaks the law, drives the vehicle..... Why should we feel sympathy for those who bring misery upon thyself?

The better way to present the horror of drunk driving is to bring in someone who did was injured because of the drunken driver. What I am talking about is collateral damage. bystanders on the street, driver in the other class. They are the truly innocent people. If they just talk about how innocent they are, the audience will think "I don't want to be him, my god." Because of that, the audience gets the messange better. They would not engage in drunk driving because not only do they not want to be in an accident, they also don't want to injure random innocent people.

Anyway, the good thing is that the assembly lasted for only an hour. As much as I liked skipping class, I really loathed the presentation. I can only say the presentation is next to wasting my time. I wonder how much good does it do for the audience. Maybe it does ease some of the mother's guilt....