I remember, years ago, talking to a middle-aged lady about our daughter. Our girl was in trouble, and she seemed unable to avoid risky and destructive situations. The woman with whom I was speaking nodded her head sagely and said, “Well, she just needs to learn to make good decisions.”
That comment was profoundly naive. I can only imagine that the lady had never been in a situation where all choices are bad choices. The only real decision is to select the choice that causes the least amount of damage.
Let’s look at a hypothetical situation. Let’s say that there is a young woman with an alcohol addiction. No amount of encouragement or cajoling or threatening seems to make any difference in her behavior. She has four drunk driving convictions under her belt. She has a little boy who is being raised by her parents because she can’t stay clean. Her relapses are becoming more severe and more frequent as time goes on. The woman has a monkey on her back, and it refuses to let her go.
The young woman has been in a car accident recently. The accident was not at all her fault. Her father, for reasons that seemed good at the time, bought her a replacement vehicle. The young woman is only supposed to drive a car equipped with a breathalyzer. The “new” car does not have one yet. It is possible for her to operate this car while under the influence of alcohol. She knows that she should not do that. She knows that the consequences of that act could be horrendous. She knows the risks.
The young woman is living temporarily in her parents’ house. On a snowy Sunday morning, her parents take the woman’s toddler son to church while the young woman stays at home. Upon their return, they see the woman’s car stuck in a deep ditch in front of the house, the rear of the vehicle in the snow and the hood pointed up toward the sky.
The little boy is asleep in the car. The grandmother takes the boy inside the house and lies down with him. The father of the young woman checks on the car in the ditch. The young woman is in the driver’s seat, using her phone. The dad opens the car door and asks, “Are you drunk?”
The woman glares back at him and says, “No.”
That is a lie. She’s hammered. After years of experience, the father knows how she looks and talks when she is drunk. He also knows from experience not to get into an argument with her while she is in that state. Emotions have in the past escalated quickly and unpredictably. He decides to call 911. He’s done that many times before. He figures that it is time for a professional to handle the situation.
A few minutes later, a police car arrives. The officer (who happens to be male) gets out of the black-and-white and talks with the young woman. The father observes the conversation from a safe distance. The young woman is surly and uncooperative. The police office keeps his cool, but tempers are rising.
A second squad car shows up. A female officer comes over to the car. Both cops are trying to convince the young woman to get out of the car. She refuses. She swears at them.
Now, a third police vehicle comes on the scene. Another male officer approaches the car in the ditch. The manage to muscle the woman out of the disabled car. She falls down, and they pick her back up. She is belligerent. They cuff her.
The female officer attempts to escort the young woman to a squad car. The woman causes both of them to fall to the pavement hard. The two other cops get them back on their feet. The female police officer yells at the woman, “Don’t DO that.”
At this point, the young woman is screaming, “I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU!”
The three officers wrestle her into the squad car. The first cop stays behind to ask the father a few questions. Both of them are flustered. The episode has been extremely intense for everyone involved.
The young woman calls her parents later from jail. She is being charged with her fifth drunk driving violation, and with assaulting a police officer. By any objective standard, this is bad, really bad. She is looking at serious prison time.
Later, while lying awake in bed, the father replays his mental recording of the event and wonders what he could have done differently. It is a pointless exercise, but one that needs to be done anyway.
What would have happened if he had not called 911? Somehow, without violence, he would have had to get the young woman out of the car and out of the way. He would have had to get her vehicle winched out. Those are the easy tasks. Would the young woman attempt to drive drunk again if the police had not intervened? Yes. Would she possibly hit and kill an innocent person? Yes. Was the intervention necessary? Yes.
Is there fallout and collateral damage? Oh yeah, lots of it. Foremost is the fact that the young woman’s son will not have his mother actively in his life for years. That will hurt. It hurts already. She will go to prison. That means she will leave a lot of loose ends. She has been in prison before, and that is like a small death. She will be unavailable, for years.
Were there any good choices in this scenario? The father doesn’t know. He only knows that he made a choice and now he has to live with it.
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Frank (Francis) Pauc is a graduate of West Point, Class of 1980. He completed the Military Intelligence Basic Course at Fort Huachuca and then went to Flight School at Fort Rucker. Frank was stationed with the 3rd Armor Division in West Germany at Fliegerhorst Airfield from December 1981 to January 1985. He flew Hueys and Black Hawks and was next assigned to the 7th Infantry Division at Fort Ord, CA. He got the hell out of the Army in August 1986.
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