Tuesday, September 23, 2008

A Stupid Mistake

I did a bad thing yesterday.

I may have mentioned that I'm treasurer of my MOMS Club chapter? Well, I was under pressure from our editor to get to the PO box and see if there was a check from an advertiser asap because she wanted to send out the October newsletter last night.

But I didn't make it out over the weekend, and Mondays are generally bad days for me anyway because I'm recovering from the weekend. So I slept until 1:30 p.m., took my pain meds followed by a shower, and headed downstairs. By 2:30 p.m., I was feeling not-so-bad and decided to go run the errand after all so I didn't have anyone yelling at me for screwing up their schedule.

I didn't get in an accident. I didn't break any traffic laws that I'm aware of, other than driving under the influence ... so no big deal, right?

But it was. I'm usually so careful not to drive if I've taken pain meds, just as I used to be meticulous about not driving if I'd drunk anything alcoholic. (That's moot for me now because I can't have alcohol due to the meds I take.) I've actually had arguments with people who think it's no big deal to drive after taking a couple Vicodin because I believe it's exactly the same as driving after a drink or two: You don't feel tipsy or drunk or loopy, but your reactions are affected all the same.

When I was kid and my friends were starting to drive, my father took me aside (as I'm sure he did my siblings) and made me promise I'd never drive if I drank and I'd never get in a car with someone else who had been drinking. In return, he promised that if I called and said I needed a ride home for safety's sake, that he would come get me no matter how late at night and there would be no questions asked nor any punishments for ending up at a party with alcohol.

Well, I was kind of nerdy as a high schooler, so it really wasn't a problem. In college, when calling my parents for a ride home wasn't possible since they were 4 hours away, I still pretty much stuck to that rule. I remember walking home from a Mexican restaurant where a bunch of us had gone for cheap Margaritas rather than take a ride from a drunk driver; the benefit of being drunk myself meant I didn't really mind that it was 2 or 3 miles walk to get home, and I didn't notice getting blisters or even when they started bleeding until I got home and took my shoes off.

So although I've had a few exceptions that I regret and was lucky enough to come through safely, I've been a stickler about not drinking and driving or taking pain meds and driving for pretty much my whole life.

So why did I do it yesterday for what turned out to be a $5 check for a single ad for a single month?

A dumb, dumb mistake that I hope I don't foolishly make again. Because really, I was lucky yesterday that nothing bad happened. And it's sort of a silly thing to succumb to peer pressure at the age of 41 when I had no problem resisting it (for the most part) in my teens.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hope I don't foolishly make again. Because really

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