Drinking Dreams

I had a lovely evening spent lounging around with cousins whom I heart dearly.

And then I got in my car..and started to drive home.

And got frustrated. And then angry. And then on top of that..a little bit beyond infuriated.

You see, sometimes when I drive home..I get stuck beyond...for a lack of a better word...complete and total morons.

Now, there are your regular kind of morons who are on the road. The ones who cut you off. Who go too fast. Who go to slow. Who aren't paying attention to what they're doing because they're distracted by their phones/makeup/passengers. The ones who drive too close. Or, the ones don't turn off their brights.

There are lots of reasons how someone can be an idiot while driving...and as much as they're annoying and I want to shake my fist (and sometimes DO shake my fist..) I don't get QUITE as angry as I do when I'm following someone like the complete and total moron that I was following tonight.

The one who drove 50-60 on a 80km highway.

The one who crept down to 40km/h when they saw another car on the horizon

The one who swerved from one side of the white line, right over until they rode the yellow line.

The one who only realized that they were in the opposite driving lane when I gave them a little honk, which caused them to almost end up in the ditch on the other side of the road when they realized and over-corrected.

The one who almost ended up in the lake as we rounded a curve and they attempted to throw their cigarette butt out the window.

The one who was drunk, stupid, careless and irresponsible.

I hate being stuck behind drivers who choose to make such stupid decisions. If you know you have to drive home...suck it up and don't drink. You're old enough to drive? To be responsible for driving yourself and others somewhere? When you take on that responsibility..you should be conciously making the decision to be as safe as humanly possible whenever you're in the car. If you're going to decide to drink..make sure you have a DD or a place to crash. I don't need your stupid ass on the roads making stupid decisions, not in control of the vehicle you're driving and putting my safety and the safety of everyone else on the road in jeopardy. What's the point? Seriously? What good can come of driving home drunk? Where do you get off thinking that it's okay to put MY life and the lives of ones that I love in jeopardy?You may get away with it for a while..but eventually luck runs out...and as much as it's your life and you have the right to put yourself into danger should you desire (which, for the life of me, I can't figure out WHY you'd wanna do that.)..it's NOT okay to put anyone else in that path with you. You want to live on the edge with your life? Go jump out of an airplane or something..don't drive drunk on my roads.

It's just that I've seen way too many peoples luck run out. I've seen way too many people in this place buried before they should have been because they, or someone else decided that they were fine. They knew when their judgement had been altered. They knew when they'd crossed that line between being 'okay' and having 'too much'. And that's why at LEAST once a year there is car crash in this area which usually results in a death at my old highschool from an alcohol related incident. Not to mention all of the other alcohol related deaths that aren't related to my highschool directly. It just makes me sick to my stomach when I think about all of the lives lost..all of the potential wasted...because of an inability to admit that they shouldn't be driving, that they COULDN'T drive.

So, when I found myself behind this driver tonight...I did what I always do. I crept down to whatever speed they were doing. I kept my distance even further then I usually do in case I needed to slam on my breaks. I didn't pass them..because I had no idea what side of the road they'd swerve to if I tried to do that. Quite frankly..my life is worth a lot more then the five or ten minutes faster I might have been home if I'd tried to pass them. I gritted my teeth..and wasn't even mad at the speed we were going. Instead, I was mad at the sheer stupidity of people who think that they're invincible, and worse yet..the ones who think that it's okay to put everyone elses life in danger too, because they're too full of themselves to admit that they're not perfect and they too are fallible.

If this was something that had never happened before...if this was something that was so uncommon it was more shocking then not...I don't think that I would be quite as angry. Sure, I wouldn't be HAPPY about it..but I think that I would be more sad then angry. Unfortuantly...it's something that's far too common around here. I get stuck behind cars like this far more often then I'd rather admit. And time after time..I wonder what people are thinking. How they can justify their behaviour when it's just so...stupid.

So maybe it does make me sad. Sad that it does happen so often here. Sad that people here think that it's okay, think that they're okay to drive when they're so obviously not. I know that it happens in larger cities..but I also am apt to think that because there is no such thing as public transport here, that because there are higher rates of alcohol abuse in rural areas..and because people so often just have different mentalities..it does happen more here.

I guess more then anything..I just hate hearing about death after death, funeral after funeral..where another young kid smashes into a rock wall, another car, or ends up in the bottom of a lake when there was NO need for this to happen. Hearing about a family who now has to mourn the loss of a loved one, because someone made a foolish decision. It's hard enough for me to think about people losing their lives due to disease and circumstance...let alone think about deaths that are so unnecessary. It just doesn't make sense to me...and it breaks my heart to think about all of the heartache and saddness that could have been avoided. The lost lives that could have been something more.

Life, in my humble opinion..is way too short and way too precious to be thrown away like that.

So thats why I'll sigh and head off to bed...dreaming of a world where life makes sense. Where happy endings are always there with rainbows, kittens and smiles. And, where people don't ever question driving after they've been drinking..because that's just too silly to even fathom.