Urban Fiction: Living it Out - Day Two: A New Beginning

What do you get when you combine a car, alcohol, and a one-way street? I don’t know what you get, but I got a DUI arrest. That’s Driving while Under the Influence for those of you who hadn’t heard that term before.

You see, the thing about alcohol is that it puts your brain to sleep so you don’t even know how drunk you are. This was the case with the person I…ah…er…met this morning. This person was drunk enough to drive the wrong way up a one-way street and perform some pretty strange driving maneuvers, and all the time not even know they were over the legal limit. In the state of Idaho, that’s only .08 percent blood/breath.

Anyway, back to the story. There I was just minding my business and doing my patrol thing when zip, bam, buoy –Don’t you just love the Batman sound affects?--- this drunk goes zipping through town. When I finally got them stopped and administered the three basic tests to them, I was amazed that they didn’t just put the handcuffs on themselves and go straight to jail.

Like I was saying, there are three basic tests. The gaze nystagmus, which is a test of the muscle response to stimuli after it has been affected by a CN depressant…i.e. alcohol. The second test is probably the most well know and is the walk and turn. Yep, the driver failed that one too. The last test was the one leg stand test and when done well it is beautiful to watch. When its not, its not. It can be rather scary, especially if you are standing near a busy road.

Needless to say, this little adventure ended with a trip to jail for our driver. The queerest thing however was not how they drove or even how they performed on the test, but rather that they didn’t even think they were drunk. Now that’s scary…remember the 4000-pound thing I talked about.

So with all that said, I’m thinking if you’re drinking don’t be driving. The two just don’t go together. Just saying.