My holiday wish

I haven’t drunk any alcohol in over twenty years and haven’t been alcohol impaired in over thirty. I’m not a twelve-stepper and I don’t picket bottle shops. I just don’t drink alcohol.

Not to worry – I don’t feel deprived. In fact, there are certain advantages to being the teetotaler in the group. I always have a duty driver with me. Namely, me.  And I never have to worry about what I might have said that was out of line. Well, actually I do, but that has more to do with my social inadequacies than any alcoholic haze.

I’m fortunate in that the folks I hang with don’t include any heavy drinkers. I suppose that’s largely a matter of self-selection. If you’re not one for bar-hopping or wine tasting, I guess you just don’t fall in with folks who enjoy those activities.

This isn’t to say evil spirits have never passed over my lips. I drank some with my buddies in the Navy and occasionally after. There were a couple or three epic episodes in my past of which I’m not real proud. And I can’t say I ever enjoyed the mornings after nights of imbibing.

So, we’ve established that while I don’t drink, that’s not to say I’m Mr. Pure. I’ve made my share of dumb decisions. I’ve had experience with being out of control, albeit years in the past.

I’ve also had experience with the results of other people’s overdrinking. Specifically, in 1980 I was hit by a drunk driver. Don’t know how fast the guy was going. A cop had just started out after him. The cop was just topping 100 and still losing the race when the guy and his crew truck hit my VW Rabbit from behind and threw it with me inside clear across a four-lane intersection. We ended up on top of a retaining wall in front of a Taco Bell on the far side of the intersection.

At first, we thought I’d been miraculously spared serious injury. My driver’s seat and rear half of the car radically deformed, absorbing a lot of the force. I thought I’d dodged a bullet. Then, the seizures began. 

I’d be going about my business and the next thing I knew, I’d be coming to with people bending over me. One time, I was talking to a friend on the phone and said some incoherent stuff that caused her to go next door and back-call my employer on a second phone so they’d know to come to my office and check on me. Another time, some poor schmuck minding his own business feeding the ducks at Lake Vasona Park was treated to the sight of me hitting the ground and bouncing around in the goose grease.   I lost track of the ambulance rides I took over about a four month period. I became a connoisseur of the Emergency Departments at Good Samaritan and Los Gatos Community Hospitals.

I had every neurological test then available. The doctors talked about my brain being badly shaken during the accident. They thought they understood the damage but couldn’t give me a firm prognosis and I had to wonder if I would ever be right again. I was embarrassed when I lost control because, well, I lost ALL control. I became a master at hiding my condition from family and my closest friends. Which, yes, was stupid looking back but you had to be there. I just didn't want to be asked any more frightening questions for which I had no answers. Or perhaps I was just afraid of the answers.

Over time, the seizures became less severe and more infrequent.  I came to be able to recognize when one was imminent and get into a sitting position in time to avoid new bruises. Eventually I was able to reliably drive a car again. It had become a real pain to ride a bike to work the days I couldn’t cadge a ride with a co-worker.  I had my last seizure about a year after the “accident.” For years I wondered when they might resume. And I still wonder how many years might have been shaved off my back end.  

I was incredibly lucky. I lived and went on to have a wonderful family. A friend of mine wasn't so lucky. He lost his son to a drunk driver. Just about at the age my daughters are now. The prognosis on a father’s grieving never improves.

Daughter Two is leading a conference session for the Fellowship of Reconciliation in Seabeck this weekend. Tomorrow, I’ll be driving her home seventy miles in holiday traffic. This means that some significant percentage of the drivers sharing the road with us will have had a drink or two. Or more. Or much more.

I’ll be alert for impaired drivers but the truth I learned the hard way is that you can never know which driver is going to be the one who shouldn’t be behind the wheel. Which one is going to swerve in front of you or fail to brake when traffic suddenly stops in front of you?

I am so tired of hearing people say they drink “but not to excess.” If you’re going to drive, any alcohol intake is excessive. Forget measuring blood alcohol content. Because for me, it’s not the drunk who commits the crime. It’s the guy or gal who, stone sober and with car keys in pocket or purse, takes that first drink.

Please, don’t drink or toke and then get behind the wheel. Have a great holiday weekend. And please survive it.