It Won't Happen To Me

Yesterday, the high school hosted its annual pre-prom Don't Drink and Drive program for the student body. Last year's program was a refreshing change of pace: the usual scared-straight videos and parent-style lecture was replaced by a heartfelt discussion by a young man who had been paralyzed by a drunk driver, aided (because he could not, in fact, speak) by his loving mother.

This year, no such luck. Bill Richardson, a former Gwinnett County police officer, came to give his presentation about, purportedly, teens and alcohol and driving. The presentation is part of Mr. Richardson's It Won't Happen To Me campaign to reduce the number of teen deaths resulting from car accidents. (Reported accurately by Bill as "the leading cause of death among teens today".) The program was mostly what you might expect: Bill spent a long time lecturing the kids things they should already know. A lot of dontdothises and dontdothats intermingled with graphic video clips of some real car accident tragedies and even more reenacted car accident tragedies.

The worst of these videos can be seen below. It should be noted that the students had seen before during an entirely separate "don't text and drive" program delivered as part of our school-wide Advisement program.



A couple of things stand out to me about this program, and this video in particular.

First of all, don't we all know by now that Scared Straight doesn't work? Taking young toughs to the jailhouse in the hopes of frightening them away from crime forever only ends up teaching them new and more troublesome ways to look and act tough. Likewise, when the students see tragedy in a movie, they are inclined to think of it as just that: a movie. It is clear from the first moments of the above film that it is a reenactment -- a fiction. We are conditioned to percieve this distinction, even when it does not exist: on the big screen, even true events seem "unreal." It seems like creating this sort of separation between viewer and event makes more, not less, likely an attitude of indifference or insusceptibility.

That it doesn't work, to me, seems a good thing, and we should immediately turn to different methods. This sort of pathetic appeal (pun intended) is precisely the argumentative style we should be teaching kids to recognize and reject. If we learn anything from the current state of world politics, it must be that fleeting, gut-reaction emotional response should be -- indeed, must be -- no basis for the formation of opinions and plans of action. In fact, it seems like this sort of emotional conditioning might very well lead to an increase in poor decision making. If I base my negative reaction to drunk driving on my gut reaction while viewing a disturbing video, I may just as likely base my positive reaction to drunk driving on my gut reaction while totally wasted and trying to impress a girl or seem tough or save face.

Furthermore, if your intention is to persuade kids not to drink and drive, it is advisable to stay on message. Pick your battles. This program is given 3 days before prom for a reason. Mr. Richardson lost sight of the immediate goal, and a lot of his time (and mine -- this was during my planning period) could have been saved if someone had simply told him that the texting thing had been done. That what we are really worried about is drinking. Prom is right around the corner, after all.

But Bill didn't stop there. And this is what really gets me. At some point he made the leap to eating and driving, as well. He implored the students not to eat their chicken biscuits behind the wheel.

This all reminds me of the numerous Don't Do Drugs programs that I experienced as a child. Aside from the failed reasoning behind a "just say no" philosophy (an issue I explore in some depth in an earlier post), drug use prevention programs always take one too many steps. As a child, I am with you for don't do heroin, don't do cocaine, don't do marijuana -- especially if you show me some scary pictures or bring in a convict to prove the dangers. Adding cigarettes and alcohol to the mix, though, starts to muddy the waters. After all, my dad drinks alcohol. My grandfather smokes. What gives?

The program they gave my fifth grade year also went further: caffeine is a drug.

This sort of divergence from a central theme seems to risk a complete loss of effectiveness. After all, once a Georgia-born, Coca-Cola-raised raised fifth grader hears you say that he shouldn't drink caffeine, you are finished. He no longer hears a word you say, and there is a good chance that whatever you said before has also been tossed out. You have become an unreliable source. Your credibility is shot.

Ever thus to Bill and his chicken biscuits.

The real reason for this post, though, is less a polemic than a curiosity.

You see, Bill Richardson started his program by saying, "we all have said 'It won't happen to me' before, and it's important to remember that it can happen to you." Which got me thinking: nobody ever says "It won't happen to me." In fact, the very idea of anyone saying such strikes me immediately as ridiculous.

A discussion which uses "It Won't Happen To Me" as its jumping-off point surrounds nearly every great social ill of the last 20 years. Alcohol and drug addiction, domestic violence, AIDS, even diabetes: all seem at least in part to be caused by some uninformed person saying "It Won't Happen To Me" just before partaking in some ill-advised risk behavior which leads to their inevitable ruin. The following hypothetical conversations illustrate the point:

TODD (Slamming his 14th brewski): Well, I'm bored of this party. I'm leaving. Anybody need a ride?
SUE (Concerned): Todd, you're drunk! Don't you know that driving under the influence is the leading cause of death in teens?
TODD (Climbing into his hatchback): Yeah, but it won't happen to me.

TODD (Flexing his biceps): Well, it's Friday. I am going out to have anonymous unprotected sex with multiple partners.
STU: (Stepping from the kitchen): Todd, be careful. AIDS can affect anyone. If you are going to choose to have sex out of wedlock, you should really wear a condom.
TODD (Checking his high-top fade in the mirror): Nah. It won't happen to me.

Now, I understand what these activists are aiming at when they use "It Won't Happen To Me" to start their spiel. They are not referring to an actual spoken phrase, but are rather making reference to an assumed mindset that we share before we make decisions which are statistically inadvisable. They hope that by facing the mindset beforehand we can avoid it when faced with a real situation. As I said with regards to D.A.R.E., context-free, all-or-nothing social practice is at least pointless and ineffective, at worst damaging in itself. We cannot hope -- nor should we -- that something as complex and nuanced as peer group sociology and adolescent psychology can be reduced to a set of predesignated rules and regulations. To do so is at once irresponsible and unimaginative.

"It Won't Happen To Me" is a false construct. It doesn't actually exist, in our minds or elsewhere, when we are in the midst of making a crucial decision. Or, if it does exist, it is a spontaneous generation of our psyche which likely gets much more positive reinforcement than negative. When we get in the car, even entirely sober, and face the chance of being hit by another driver. When we place our money in the bank, despite the fact that banks can collapse. When we get our hair died, knowing that many dye-jobs turn out just horribly. When we squeeze again into our skinny jeans and confront the risk of an embarrassing rip. In each of these situations, undoubtedly, we must also say to ourselves, "It Won't Happen To Me." And inevitably, more often than not, we are right.

Loud Talkers, Story Tellers, and Monster Molecules

I have fallen out of contact with too many people.

Those with whom I have maintained contact with are the most valued friends I have. I do not wonder that the value of friendship increases with time. This fact seems plain, and can be explained with simple logic: the longer you know someone, the more they know you. This is true even if, upon meeting a person, you tell them nothing about yourself before that moment. By virtue of spending regular time with the person, they know more everyday of who you "are". The argument could be made -- indeed likely has been made, and made sufficiently in my imagination for me to stand in agreement with it -- that it is impossible for someone to know anything about you before they day on which you meet. This given that any description of yourself prior to your meeting would be colored necessarily by who you "are" at that given time, and thus would not in fact be your "past," but your "current" version of that past.

I digress. I recently had a message from a friend of mine from high school. Indeed, we were best friends, and we have known each other since we were very small. Since high school, though, we have rarely talked.

His message regarded the "Monster Molecule," which, of course, is methane. He is in science now, and his masters studies bring him regularly in contact with this mother of all molecules.

Why we had termed methane the Monster Molecule escapes me, now. I do know that it was mostly nonsense, owed to our preoccupation with making Chemistry not only educational but also extremely funny and entertaining. (After learning about Johannes Brønsted's theory of acids and bases, I began writing my name with the "ø" in place of a traditional "o", figuring, simply, if Brønsted can do it, so can I. I wrote my name thus on the tops of my papers, inside chemistry and out, for the better part of the next two years. This is humor in AP Chemistry. Incidentally, my Chemistry teacher used the "ø" to sign my yearbook. She knew funny when she saw it.) We imagined methane, which has four strong covalent bonds, as some sort of molecular monster truck, coming into the chemical arena to crush all those lesser molecules in a fantastic spectacle. We even went so far, whenever mentioning the Monster Molecule, as to say it exclusively in our best "Monster Truck Rally Announcer" voice.

Gosh, those were the days, weren't they? The spirit of free creativity reigned supreme in all our endeavors.

I remember the Book Nook. This was (and still is) a used book store in the town where we grew up. Books, of course, having great importance to me, and to him as well, we spent time at the Book Nook. A bit of lore grew up between us regarding the owner of the Book Nook(or the manager, although in an establishment of this kind we assumed the two were one), who was an immense person. He was fat to the point of using a cane to get around. Not old, and not well kept, he wore t-shirts and sweat pants behind the counter where he totaled the books. He would buy back your books, if they weren't rubbish, for store credit, which you could use to buy other (though fewer) books. Whenever we would enter the store, the owner would be telling a story, thus The Story Teller, loudly enough so that everyone in the store could here him, thus the Loud Talker. He was invariably talking to someone in the store, telling them about a piece of gossip, a recent happening with regards to the business, the latest headlines, the plot of a book of interest. However, there was the sense as we perused the science fiction section, the history/cookbooks section, that he was telling us all a story. There was no music in the store, as one is used to hearing in bookstores -- classical or jazz or top 40, or jazz versions of top 40 -- just The Story Teller, The Loud Talker talking on and on, telling his story.

None of his stories do I remember. I don't remember if I cared what he was saying. Most of the time his stories had nothing to do with me. The Story Teller, though, lives on.

Once we went to the store. I think they were in the midst of relocating, to a new free-standing building down the street (which seems to me now to have formerly been some sort of restaurant). My friend and I came to look, and perhaps to buy a book. What we found were two shelves of discount books. Discount books in a used bookstore are sold at a very good price. Here we found a steal. "4 for 50¢ or 1bag for $5." We had $15 dollars between us, and left the store with upwards of 70 books.

This in itself sent us rolling. Why did we buy all these books? We hadn't even looked at the titles, but chose the ones which fit most snugly into the bags, thus more books for our buck. We left the store with only one possible reason in mind: we need to give these books away. And so we went to a Wal-Mart parking lot, emptied the bags of books into the trunk of his car, and began offering "free books" to anyone who happened by the car on their way to or from the store.

It was surprising how many people wouldn't take a book. Who doesn't want a free book?