This is my official public service announcement to you: you should probably rethink things if you decide you want to follow a drunk driver. And there you have it, folks. Your official ‘Learn From Lisa’s Idiocy’ report. See how nice I am, sparing you from being as dumb as I? You’re welcome.

So now you wanna know what happened, huh? You want to hear all about my stupidity, huh? Alright, alright. I’ll tell ya all about it!

What Happened, Lisa?

The other night, I went to pick up my kids from the church where they hang out with the youth group and since Shawn is a new driver, he wanted to drive home. No problem. That is, until we are peacefully going down the road, in the right lane – and some doofus in the left lane comes into our lane by about a foot or so and so completely almost sideswipes us!!

Shawn handled it SO WELL! He carefully swerved over to the shoulder and then back again when doofus-brain was ahead of us. I tell him to slow down and cover the brake, because, I can see that doofus is not correcting himself very well and I’m pretty sure he’s going to hit someone ahead of us. Which he does – and then he takes off! And next thing you know he’s turning left onto a side road!

When he hit the people, I decided that I was going to have Shawn pull over with them, as we were the only witnesses, I was pretty sure. All the other cars were in front of us. But then the guy foils my plan and runs from the people! (Maybe he only has a San Diego DUI Lawyer and he just doesn’t have one out here in Alabama! Who knows!) But then I’m stuck with making a split-second decision – with my new driver driving. And man, I really felt on the spot. The guy’s turning down a side road – who knows what’s gonna happen next.

So What Did Happen Next?

At the last second, I decide to have Shawn follow them. I figured that the guy probably was not going to stop and we could get the victims to pull over and give them our information. I figured with a ‘hit and run’ they were really going to need a witness, you know? I tell Shawn just to hang back some, because, who knows what could happen, right? We see, though, that the drunk guy pulled over into a church parking lot and the victims pull in after him. So we drive on down there and pull over, as well.

And let me tell you, this guy was out of it!! It was nuts. He kept trying to change the whole story. He said that he hit the people right in front of his apartment on this side road – nope. On the highway, dude. He said he had two kids. Then he said he had three kids. And the guy didn’t have insurance or even a license. Been there done that already, with a DUI? Maybe…

The people that he hit were an elderly couple and they were as nice as could be and were really grateful that we had stopped. The police eventually came and did a field sobriety test on the guy, which he sorely failed, and cuffed him. They talked to all of us, getting all of the details of what happened and got our information and that was pretty much that.

So it all turned out okay. That is, until I told my hubby what happened.

Why In The Heck Did You Follow Them?!

I called hubby to tell him all about it, thinking it was a pretty exciting story. I mean, heck, Shawn doesn’t even have his license yet and he’s almost been hit by a drunk driver! And it’s always exciting when the police are involved, right? Well, if you’re not the one getting cuffed, anyway. But you know what? Mark got mad. Hrmph. What a way to spoil a girl’s fun!

He said, “Why in the hell did you follow them? What were you thinking? Are you crazy? You could have gotten shot. That could have been a gang member or some hillbilly with a gun! Why didn’t you just pull over where you were and call the police???”

Oh, duh. At that moment, you know, when I was deciding what to do (when the guy turned left) my brain told me I had two options. Follow so you can be a witness – or go home. It never even entered my mind to just pull over right there and call the police. Darn brain! Some help you are! I totally could have done that and still been helpful to those people – and not risked our lives by following God knows who, who is quite obviously drunk and committing a hit and run. Sheesh!

I swear sometimes my brain just wants me dead. It can really be no help at all! But at least you can benefit from it! Learn from my idiocy:

Don’t follow drunk drivers!!