I despise people who feel the need to drink and drive. They always would make us watch those videos and sit through those lectures in middle school health classes, all school assemblies, and drivers ed. They'd bring in women from MADD, or guys in their late twenties horribly deformed by major car accidents, and maybe they'd scare the shit out of you for the hour, or even the afternoon. Maybe it would seem totally hokey, maybe you just wouldn't even think about it. I probably leaned towards the first and then fell into the last.

Talking to my mother on the phone just now, she told me about this email she got from Connecticut College, where my twin brother goes to school, though he's in Beijing currently, studying there for the semester. A girl he knew, a girl he was friends with through the humanitarian work they both did for Africa--him for Darfur, her for Uganda--was killed this morning, on her way to Uganda with six other kids from my brother's grade at Connecticut College. A 23 year old guy coming the wrong way down the highway slammed into the van that was taking all the kids to the airport for their aid mission. He was totally fine.

I don't know anything else about the girl. But it infuriates me nonetheless. I started crying when I got off the phone, and I couldn't even tell you why, except it would probably be why I cry over any of these things, from Eve Carson to any of the school shootings. It is always needless and tragic and horrible no matter what the age of the people involved. But someone your own age, someone you could have conceivably hung out with, had classes with, even just vaguely knew. Someone who was just beginning to go places, who was doing such good. And to be killed like that, over someone else's stupidity? What do you even say? That's why they have those assemblies, that's why they try to scare the shit out of you. I've sat in the passenger seat of cars of friends who had a few drinks hours before we leave the bar, taking backroads to avoid cops and random breathalyzers, bemoaning the Fairfield police. But that's why.

Everyone's got a story like this, though. Hopefully you aren't just working against the tide.