In high school, long long ago when only the coolest kids had cell phones. I had my first run with law enforcement. It was the night of a high school basketball game. A rival game involving the New Albany Bulldogs versus my Jeffersonville Red Devils. (I could care less about this rivalry, but I do like to socialize, so there’s that.) I was 16-years old at the time and I was a young and inexperienced drug user. I got the bright idea to take a handful of Xanax and drink an unspecified amount of alcohol.
At some point in the basketball game I decided that I’d had too much to drink and stumbled out to my car to go home. As I drove out of the parking lot, I hit a vehicle that belonged to one of the school’s counselors. According to the police I was so impaired that I would drift in and out of consciousness and ask the officers what was happening.
Evidently this happened several times throughout the evening.
All I remembered was waking up in the local detention center alongside a kid who was making a pair of dice from wet toilet paper.
My parents came and got me the next day.
This was the first time I was arrested for driving under the influence, but certainly wouldn’t be the last.