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May. 24th, 2012 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancing_crowso the most stressful part of my day wasn't driving my dad from Maine to home (he's not home to his house yet, but he's two states closer, and he's in my town). The trip was smooth and surprisingly easy.
The weirdest part of my day was when I helped keep a severely impaired kid from driving. He couldn't walk, couldn't talk smoothly, staggered and halted when he was moving. I hadn't seen him go in, but I wondered about his way of moving when he came out. And then the kid behind the counter said "he's tripping balls" and tried to talk him out of driving anywhere until he'd come off it, at least a little. I joined the counter kid, and finally just wound up holding the door open to the tripping kid's car. We offered to drive him, counter kid offered to drive him in his car or accompany him in my car. I guess if he'd managed to start his car and drive anywhere I would have called the cops on him.
I had a bunch of really bad moments because I kept wondering: is this kid normally like this? am I harassing the handicapped? am I missing some other clues and I should just knock him on the head and take him to the hospital? I was grateful to counter-kid who said tripping-kid was a snowboarder, an athlete, usually spoke clearly and ate half the menu - without someone else's previous knowledge I wouldn't have had the courage to stand there and keep telling him NO when he wanted us to let him drive away.
Eventually a parental person arrived and yelled at him, and thanked us, and assured us he'd get the kid home, and we drifted off, back to our usual things. I went home and ranted to my kids, and also thanked them for not pursuing that particular form of stupid, and they hugged me, even Aerin's Young Man, until I stopped shaking.
It seemed really, really important not to let him drive. Should I have done something different?
The weirdest part of my day was when I helped keep a severely impaired kid from driving. He couldn't walk, couldn't talk smoothly, staggered and halted when he was moving. I hadn't seen him go in, but I wondered about his way of moving when he came out. And then the kid behind the counter said "he's tripping balls" and tried to talk him out of driving anywhere until he'd come off it, at least a little. I joined the counter kid, and finally just wound up holding the door open to the tripping kid's car. We offered to drive him, counter kid offered to drive him in his car or accompany him in my car. I guess if he'd managed to start his car and drive anywhere I would have called the cops on him.
I had a bunch of really bad moments because I kept wondering: is this kid normally like this? am I harassing the handicapped? am I missing some other clues and I should just knock him on the head and take him to the hospital? I was grateful to counter-kid who said tripping-kid was a snowboarder, an athlete, usually spoke clearly and ate half the menu - without someone else's previous knowledge I wouldn't have had the courage to stand there and keep telling him NO when he wanted us to let him drive away.
Eventually a parental person arrived and yelled at him, and thanked us, and assured us he'd get the kid home, and we drifted off, back to our usual things. I went home and ranted to my kids, and also thanked them for not pursuing that particular form of stupid, and they hugged me, even Aerin's Young Man, until I stopped shaking.
It seemed really, really important not to let him drive. Should I have done something different?