I'm sure it sounded like a good idea at the time.
Late last month, a group of twenty Highland Park, Illinois high school students hired Any Time Limo to take them to a restaurant and then to the homecoming dance. When limo driver Leonel Cesar picked the group up, he suspected that some of the kids had been drinking. The night quickly went downhill from there.
One of the kids asked Cesar to stop at his house before heading to the restaurant. When the youngster came out of the house, he was carrying a bag that Cesar suspected contained bottles of booze. When Cesar asked what was in the bag, the student replied: "it's none of your business. Don't worry, you'll be tipped." At that point, Cesar tried unsuccessfully to contact a couple of the parents.
Failing to reach the parents, Cesar then called the police. In the meantime, the kids offered him money to simply forget the entire incident. When the cops arrived, they determined that 13 of the 20 kids had been drinking and issued underage drinking citations accordingly.
Proving the no good deed goes unpunished, at least one parent is threatening to sue Cesar and the limo company for calling the police! Others say that Cesar overreacted because "It's homecoming". It's too early to tell whether this story will, in the end, help or hurt Cesar's business.
I think it's great when people come up with alternatives to drinking and driving. Renting a limo is certainly one of those alternatives. At the same time, this incident involves high school kids. How in the world could anyone, especially the parents, criticize the driver for what he did?
Imagine if the driver had done nothing and one of the kids had chugged a bottle of vodka at the school dance. Further imagine that subsequently the kid had to be rushed to the hospital with acute alcohol poisoning. Can you imagine the hell there would be to pay if it later came out that the limo driver had known the kids had liquor but had looked the other way?
Thankfully, the teenagers in this story are all safe. This may very well be though because of the intervention of the limo driver.
I'm sorry that some parents are upset that their children received underage drinking citations. As I frequently say however, "Life is tough, get a helmet". Rather than being angry with the limo driver, perhaps these parents should direct their ire where it really belongs - namely at their kids!
Actually, this whole situation offers a great opportunity for a "teachable moment". You know, the one where you sit your child down and tell him that (to paraphrase Dean Wormer in the film Animal House) "arrogant, drunk and stupid is no way to go through high school".
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