Take care of yourself this fourth of July with all of your holiday travel, drinking and driving and fatigued driving. Make sure someone doesn’t roofie your beer or lace your bottle rocket with Scopolamine where you find a zombie version of yourself, willfully surrendering your belongings to a drug lord. Or, better yet, find yourself in a bathtub of ice in a motel six with a kidney missing…and you look over to see that someone’s left the cap off of the toothpaste (#neanderthals). Or worse yet, find yourself tied to a bed in a motel six with only one bar on your phone…darned (insert any cellular service here), I curse thee. When I go to South America, I openly drink like a sailor so they know my kidneys aren’t worth the plucking. They must have caught on at the DPS because I signed up to be an organ donor, but they didn’t put the little red heart on my driver license. What an insult. Like “No thanks…we don’t want any of that.”
If you’re waiting for a transition or segue from one paragraph to the next…don’t hold your breath, okay? Apparently, the fourth of July is the busiest day of the year for the police because of DWI’s. This day even exceeds New Years Eve because people are generally drinking later in the evening and closer to midnight on New Years’ Eve, while they may be drinking all day long on the fourth of July. Be aware that most people on the road with you this week are taking vacation time. Which means time to relax, surrender the brain and go on automatic pilot from the neck, up. So you’ll be seeing a lot of holiday travel, drinking and driving and fatigued driving around you.
I went to my hometown for Independence Day a few years back. It is common knowledge that small towns are meth lab capitals. While I find that hard to believe, since most towns only have one or two police on staff (like Mayberry RFD), and they would have to know about the location of a meth lab in their small town. I refuse to believe that they would be in on it. Not too long ago, I did a show in a small ghost town to some nice folks who were obviously struggling in this economy. The guy I worked with, opened with this “Thanks for coming out from your meth labs to see a comedy show.” The room went silent, then everyone was whispering to each other about what body part of his they were going to remove in the parking lot after the show. I slipped into the ladies room and washed my hands for about 20 minutes until it died down. Then I crept out to my car and drove back home. I haven’t seen that guy since. Not on Facebook, not at a comedy club, no-where. He just vanished! In my hometown, the mayor had given some guy money to go across the state border to buy fireworks for the city’s annual Independence Day celebration. And the guy never came back. Did I mention the correlation between small towns and meth labs? When you go into a tavern, and the tip jar says “meth money,” you know you’re really home. Sorry, too harsh?
Until next week…happy Independence Day.
Daun Thompson
Writer / Comedienne / Artist / Benevolent Thesbo
Holiday Travel, Drinking and Driving and Fatigued Driving – Comedy Defensive Driving