They Don't Have to Like Us

Last weekend there was a fancy Cut-a-Thon at Space07 in Midtown Sacramento -- a fund-raiser for NCAC. So I'll make what could be (and has been) a long story a little less than long:
Got a haircut (eek!), walked over to say goodbye to friends who were enjoying a lovely afternoon outside, and saw two very very very inebriated girls stumbling (actually, stumbling makes it sound like they had some muscle control left - they did not) walking by. In the next few minutes, we learned that they were fumbling around for their keys to drive themselves home. Ummm. No.

So I followed them. Naturally.

When I came upon them, one was pacing back and forth and the other was sitting, propped up against the side of a building. I asked them how they were doing and they got defensive. They said they were looking for their car. Then all my friends I had gone to say hi to were right behind me. I think I would feel defensive too. Through bits and pieces of what we were able to pick up - and we had to sort of read between the lines as they couldn't get their story straight - we learned that one of them was fine to drive and the other of course was not, one had a son who is her life and she would not do anything to jeopardize that, one of them had a boyfriend who lives somewhere in the vicinity who she was not calling for some reason, neither of them would accept help, the one who declared she was fine to drive burst into tears on several occasions and tried to convince us, through the slurring and the tears that she lived close and her car was also close, that our meddling was completely unnecessary; we learned they live about 35 minutes (at least) from midtown, and we learned that Laurie (on our side of the tussle) has madskilz when it comes to determining whether someone has fake-dialed and then proceeded to have a fake conversation.

When it became clear that they were pissed and storming off, I looked at Mindy wondering if this is the point we drop it, and she said, "Well. They don't have to like us."
So after lots of crying, and lying, and sprawling out on the sidewalk, the girls were coaxed and shoved into Laurie's car and she drove them the 40 minutes (or so) to one of their houses in their car and her boyfriend followed so he could take her (Laurie) home.

At one point a cop drove by and asked if everything was okay. I shook my head no. Someone said yes. I think tossing those girls in a cell for a while might have been good for them (if I'd been alone, the girls would have been arrested for public drunkenness or something to that effect). I don't know why I meddle when I see an obvious mess. But I kept thinking about the sequence of events -- the bartender that didn't cut them off, the guys they passed on the sidewalk who questioned them but left when the girls said they felt bothered, the cop that didn't stop . . . all of that leads up to a couple of wasted girls out on the street driving themselves home among a highway full of unsuspecting drivers.
We could have been on that list -- the group of people who confronted the drunk, would-be drivers, but then walked off when the drunks told them off.
I'm starting to sound like an after-school special.

[I was telling Emily the story later and we started listing off the torts for which we (the group of sober meddlers) would have been liable: kidnapping, false imprisonment, assault, trespass to chattels, defamation . . .
Sometimes, everything is a law school exam.
I don't know any attorney who would take that on contingency though.]