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From: donn@utah-gr.UUCP (Donn Seeley)
Newsgroups: net.singles,net.flame
Subject: Re: Six Pack as unit of measure
Message-ID: <1391@utah-gr.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 23-Mar-85 08:46:41 EST
Article-I.D.: utah-gr.1391
Posted: Sat Mar 23 08:46:41 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 30-Mar-85 05:58:17 EST
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept
Lines: 81
Xref: linus net.singles:5402 net.flame:7949


Why is it that some of these protestations of innocence -- 'Six-pack as
a measure of driving distance?  Huh, I was just joking!  I mean, I was
only talking about passengers!' -- don't strike me as terrifically
sincere?  Perhaps it's because I've met a number of people who seemed
to have the attitude, 'Well, it's all in fun, everybody drinks and
drives now and then, but some assholes take it too seriously so I'll
fib a bit to them.'

This sort of rationalization is only slightly better than 'I only hit
her when I'm drunk'...  Only assholes fail to understand that drunks
are magically free of responsibilities, of course.

I once stayed in a household with a female renter who was considerably
younger than me.  She had a boyfriend who appeared to be a bit older
than me who owned a sports car.  I don't know if this car was modified
in any clever way but it certainly made a lot of noise, and when this
guy screeched into the lot at 3 AM he invariably woke me up.  She would
go downstairs to fetch him and they would come inside after talking a
while and go upstairs and sack out, which I naively thought was a sign
of a beautiful relationship.

One night he screamed in and parked, and presently he knocked on the
door downstairs.  I was starting to drift back to sleep when the
knocking came again and I realized that his girlfriend hadn't heard
him.  I pulled some clothes on and went downstairs to let him in.  When
I opened the door he nearly fell on me.  It took him a minute or so to
realize that I wasn't his girlfriend; then we both stood there
speechless, me with awe that this man had driven while in such a
terrible condition that he could barely walk, and him because he had
forgotten how to talk...  He reeked of vomit; his clothes were stained
and his eyes were so bloodshot that the whites looked pink.  The
girlfriend pushed past me as I stood there staring at him; after a
nervous glance at me, she took him by the hand and towed him out into
the parking lot to walk it off.  When she got back with him I extracted
a promise that she wouldn't let him drive again, then I went back to
bed.

When I next saw her she was very contrite.  'He doesn't normally do
this,' she lied.  'He just got a bit wild the other night.' I got her
to say she wouldn't let him do it again.  I told her I was afraid he
might smash my car up in the lot -- I thought that this was probably
the only way that I might persuade her that I had some business
worrying about her boyfriend's problem, since it clearly would have
bored her if I had whined on about her responsibilities to society.
In hindsight, how remarkably dumb and obtuse I was...

No, he didn't kill himself.  The next time I answered his knock at the
door a couple weeks later, he was in no better or worse condition than
before.  I got no excuses from her this time, just an angry glare.  I
thought back to all the times when she had got a ride home with him and
had come to the house alone, talked a bit with whomever was around,
walked out and went to his car for a chat, after which he would drive
off.  I remembered the 3 AM conversations in the parking lot, under the
moon.  How romantic: she was trying to keep him from coming in the
house when someone would see him dead drunk.

I talked it over with the other housemates, but I still felt like a
jerk when I finally confronted her.  I fudged a little -- 'What if he
has an accident in the lot?  We could lose our lease.' But I was being
an asshole:  'What right have you to tell me how to pick my friends?'
At least she wasn't lying any more...

'Ditch him,' I said.  'It'll do you both good in the end.'

She moved out the next week.

Was I a creep for sticking my nose in where it didn't belong?  I mean,
everybody drinks and drives some of the time, right?  Why should I be
so righteous?  I have a hard time deciding where to draw the line,
because any criticism I make is likely to be rebutted with a remark
that begins, 'Just because you don't drink...'

I eventually stuck the incident in my mental file titled 'Indestructible
Destructive Relationships', but every now and then I pull it out and
reconsider it.  I thought that writing about it would somehow explain
it to me but it didn't.  And I still don't understand why someone would
think that using the six-pack as a measure of driving distance would be
funny...

Donn Seeley    University of Utah CS Dept    donn@utah-cs.arpa
40 46' 6"N 111 50' 34"W    (801) 581-5668    decvax!utah-cs!donn