Thanks for all the birthday wishes. I didn't know I had so many friends. For those who forgot, you are dead to me. Exactly one year ago I wrote this on my birthday. It never made the migration from the old site so it's probably new to you; go read it. It was a list of goals, and an erie foresight by my grandmother. In the entire year since then I have only ended up accomplishing a single one of my goals, and that only partially. Instead of being able to throw a football like a man, I can throw it like a boy. Like a chubby little boy with fat hands. By next year I'd like to work my way towards being a serious contender in a middle school punt, pass, and kick competition... but... you know, baby steps. In other news, you'll never guess how I spent my birthday today.

One of the pieces of my DUI sentence that I've kept brushing under the rug was to "Attend a MADD Impact Panel." It's a good thing I called, because the next one is in Richmond the day before all of my sentence requirements are due. (Except jail, I'll explain that another time) I had called and asked what I had to do to register, and they said "appear in person" to which I replied, "You've got to be kidding me."  Turns out, they were not kidding me.  So today I got to drive 3.5 hours each way to Richmond to register to get yelled at by mothers, brothers, and sons who have had their loved ones knocked off by drunk drivers. That's right, Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. Their name implies every bit of fun in store, letting me know right off the bat that they're against me. A nice pregame might be watching Beaches with my dad and having him tell the story about the night he left during commercials.

So this trip was just to register (7 hours of driving, 10 minutes of registering), and next week I get to go back for the main event. Hopefully they'll show those home movies of when their kids were at the perfect adorable age, and then cut to the bloody wreck of twisted steel, and then fade out to white-on-black text of, "...You killed my son." That's about what I picture for three hours. If this MADD presentation is a production worth its salt, this is how the lineup should go:

The Tearjerker.

A good option for this would be an elderly lady (realistically more deadly behind the wheel than any of her audience) who has recently lost her husband and life-long companion to a drunk driver. Without him she's helpless, and other implications that she's going to die alone. Extra points: If she can make her old person neck-giblet quiver at the onset of tears.

Second option: Mother of a child who had their whole life ahead of him (honor roll student, goofball with a heart of gold, great athlete, etc.) cut short by a drunk driver. There will be a whole box of home movies. We'll see some shots of him playing baseball, prom, graduation, car wreck, funeral.

Either way, the Kleenex won't make it to the second row. A solid presentation will probably have 3-5 of these speakers stripping off the layers of protection and melting the hardest of hearts. Now that everyone strapped to their chairs is feeling guilty and defenseless, you send in:

The Raging Bitch.

The latter half of the "Good Cop, Bad Cop" strategy. The name of the campaign, after all, is MADD. There will be profanity. There will be much pointing and finger wagging. This character will unload on us because we are the embodied downfall of society. We started the spread of AIDS. We spent the national debt. Although we didn't personally kill her kid, we drove drunk too so we must be drinking buddies with the guy who did.

The Sandman

So now we all feel like total pieces of shit. We're unworthy to drive, unworthy to live, and we owe that last lady our firstborn. By the end of her speech, I'm going to want to walk up and beg her to let me mow her grass for the rest of my life. That's when you send in the cleanup hitter. She tells us that she knows we're all good people. We have potential, we just have to tap into it. We can help make the world a better place.

Shouts of Hallelujah ring from the crowd, and we all start clapping on our way out the door for brunch at Cracker Barrel.

In reality, we're probably just going to get the fill in the blank coloring books we've been getting for every other function.