We got a phone call tonight: my husband’s cousin. A car accident.  Gone.
Richard then reminisced over dinner about someone he’d known in his high school back in the day, a kid who at 15 drank, stole his parents’ car, and then crashed it while fleeing the cops. Not a smart move.
The judge could have taken away his possibility of getting a license till he hit 21, as is often done, but the judge wanted to change that boy’s behavior and make a difference to him. So instead, he sentenced the kid to volunteering in his local ER. During the midnight shift. Where he got to see all the results of all the people making the same kind of mistake he’d made, or their victims, in all the reality of what that meant.
The kid never drank again.