Who will celebrate Christmas Day and New Year's Day?

My fellow drivers, I'm sorry to say this but some of us will not celebrate Christmas Day nor New Year's Day because we will be dead!

I know, I know that's a very sober thing to say but it will turn out to be true. This is the festival season and what do we do when festivals come around? We lose touch with reality and we end up killing ourselves and each other. We have done this ever  since the motor vehicle came on the scene. Some years are better than others but in one form or another the carnage has continued.

I was being driven by a person recently who broke every rule there ever was. I was certain my life was about to end, and to make matters worse at the end of that journey we had to turn around and return to our point of departure. That was a little too much excitement for my blood.

Nowhere is it written that we have to lose our lives just because the country is having a fiesta. That is not what fiestas are for. Ideally they bring families together to enjoy themselves and afterwards to return safely home. For the past thirty years I have been the designated driver, the one with the responsibility to get my family home safely. That has meant that I have had to avoid drinking alcohol, and in the process I rarely do take a drink. Even then it will only be one small one in the comfort of my home when I know I will not have to get in the car and drive.

I'm not saying I'm better than anyone else, just that I'm still alive and a lot of people who failed to observe this rule of not driving after having impaired one's judgement are dead. That's the difference.

I really do want to wish for each and everyone of you a Happy Holiday spent with your families. By family I mean your biologic family or the group you hang out with who are like family to you. By making this wish I want it to come true. It's not an idle wish to which I simply pay lip service.

If you'll drive with care and caution; stay sober and away from drugs that diminish your judgement so that you are always alert you will be helping to make my sincere hope and dream of these final few days of the year free from death on the road.

That would be the best Christmas present that anyone could give me.

Happy Holidays everyone!  We will talk about 2018 when it gets here.

Copyright (c) 2017
Eugene Carmichael