Showing posts with label DARE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DARE. Show all posts

Monday, January 24, 2011

Getting to Know You...Getting to Know ALL About You....



The Beast, like her father, is social…very social. With every new school year I am thrown into a group of New Moms because of the child’s ever expanding social connections. Some moms I click with and others not so much. Some I think I would like, but then some horrible character flaw is revealed—like they don’t drink or are republicans.

“I just picked up a bottle of wine—would you like a glass?” Said the New Mom to me.

So far, so good—always wise to offer to another mom, regardless of event (this happened to be an evening birthday party pick-up) a glass of wine. Then she called out over her shoulder as she was getting the glasses “ I hate keeping wine in the house. I think it is dangerous.”

And I thought—“Freak! Guns are dangerous to have in the house—wine is a good thing.” Obviously this New Mom is taking the D.A.R.E. program to the Extremes.

But instead of being thoughtful and inquiring about AA issues in the home…I said: “That’s odd. I hate if we have less than the case of red wine in the cellar—just on the off chance there is another 9/11 event—we want to be prepared…wine is key, that and the 40 bags of Starbucks coffee.”

She stared at me as though to say—“You know--you are letting the terrorists win.” But instead…she just smiled.

The chic still drinks and has the social wherewithal to offer me wine—she has potential. Unlike the non-drinking, pseudo tea-party types who live in the McMansions down the street.

The Man tells me if I were more open-minded and less snarky—I would probably have more friends. I remind him—I would no longer be the woman he fell in love with: A bitter and sarcastic New Yorker.

I will let The Beast and The Man grow our social sphere.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Underage Drinking versus Violent Death--Which is Worse?

I am not that thrilled about the DARE program…mainly because I don’t like police in the schools AND they talk about alcohol like it is a bad thing…ANY amount of alcohol. But I have to say…WHATEVER those police officers are saying to those kids… IT is having an impact.


The other day I was at our infamous Mother-Daughter Book Club discussing yet ANOTHER disturbing “Young Adult” read called Catching Fire. If you have a tween/teen at home—I am sure you are all too familiar with this Sci Fi series. It is set in a bleak future after the world has been ravaged by the effects of global warming. The plot is slightly complicated, but the bottom line is that the world of this book is rather hostile and oppressive and the main event of the first book was the Hunger Game--a game in which children from different districts of this new society are forced to fight one another to the death.


Of course the graphic nature of the deaths and the various other examples of man’s inhumanities to man in the book were all taken in with a blasé “we have seen/read it all before” attitude by the girls in the book group. Yet, oddly enough—a scene in the book that the mothers did not even really take note of (because we are obviously drunks by DARE standards) shocked the girls.


The scene in question was when the main character, a teenage girl was given a bottle of alcohol by an adult so that she could get drunk and drown her sorrows. This act, above all the other horrors the book illustrated, was greeted by the girls with: “can you believe that?!” and “Oh My God! What was he thinking-- giving her alcohol!” Go figure. How did underage drinking somehow become worse than murder?


I have to say—Hats Off to the police. Could the police please start a program about helping out at home and getting homework done on time?