"Professionally, I'm coasting: I have a job that demands plenty but does not push me much.
More personally, my life is fairly dull. I've managed to live in (this area) for a couple years without really establishing any meaningful friendships."
There's been a ridiculous amount of press about this woman who fell on the train tracks in Boston, right when a train was coming, and it stopped right over her thanks to a lot of wildly waving people on the platform and a train operator who was paying attention. It's an exciting, feel-good story, right? Noone was hurt, strangers helped strangers, and the train operator got a commendation. And multiple security cameras caught the action from several different angles.
But I have a BIG problem with this story. Though it's been mentioned that this woman was drinking, it's mentioned as an aside. I mean, check out this story. First of all, this isn't in the written story, but if you watch any of the videos, you'll see that she's smoking on the platform. That's illegal. Even if it weren't, it takes a certain amount of selfishness and self-absorption to not realize that you're in an enclosed underground tunnel with a lot of other people, and you're now subjecting them to your smoke. And there's a reason that she may have been more willing to inconvenience others, and that reason is that she had come from doing some pretty serious drinking. The article mentions that she had had 4 22-oz beers. That's a LOT of liquid. That's more than 4 bottles of coke. A regular single-serving carbonated beverage bottle is 20 oz. She had 4 of these, and then some. Let's say I was at dinner with you, and I ordered 4 drinks this large, 4 cokes, say. You would certainly think I was very thirsty, you might wonder about my sugar (or artificial sweetener) intake. Even over a longer period of time, that's a lot of liquid.
Even in a party situation, that's a lot of drink for an average-sized woman. There's only one reason to drink that much alcohol, and that's if you're intending to get drunk. As a teetotaler, I realize that my perception is different from others, from drinkers'. Of course, she has the right to drink with intent to get drunk. After all, she wasn't driving, she was taking public transportation. But your actions as a drunk person radiate outward from you and have consequences, and they may ultimately be benign or they may be disastrous, but they are certainly different than when you are sober. They are less controlled, there's an element of risk because you are, whether you wish to acknowledge it or not, impaired. Which is why she says she didn't think she was drunk, and she "felt fine" walking to the train. Yeah, I'm sure she felt fine. Noone who's drunk ever thinks they're impaired. There's this odd belief that you can be buzzed and still be in complete control. That's called rationalization. They may realize they're drunk, but they rarely consider themselves impaired, especially if they don't intend to drive, the one thing that drinkers are strongly warned away from doing. We have a cavalier attitude towards drinking in this country. We think that if we launch a "don't drive drunk" campaign, or that if we don't drive drunk, that's all that needs to be done.
I'm not advocating that people not drink, or even not drink to excess (if that's your thing - yawn), and I'm not sure what the answer is. But this woman's impairment could have killed her, and ruined many other lives. If the platform had been empty or if the other passengers hadn't been paying attention, the outcome would have been much different. Imagine how the train operator would have felt if the train stopped a few feet further and seriously injured or killed her? That would be something that young train operator (about the same age as the drunk woman) would have carried around for the rest of her life. Not to mention all the other people on the platform who would be left to re-live that horrible scene over and over. And her family, friends, etc.
I highly doubt that this was this woman's first time being drunk. If you choose to drink to excess, I think it should be your responsibility to, when you become an active ongoing drinker, learn your own limitations, know your impairment levels, have a sober friend available to assess you, but maybe making the assumption that all you have to do in advance is decide to take public transit isn't enough. There are too many other moving parts and variables that could equal a disastrous outcome, because you're not in control of your faculties, even if you think you're "fine". And when you choose to interact with the outside world (and massive, fast-moving pieces of machinery, even if you're not driving them) while impaired, perhaps some more pre-planning is necessary. Drunk people are selfish in that state; the time to think about how your drunkenness might affect others is BEFORE you start drinking, every time you drink to get drunk, or think you might. There's a interesting "out of sight, out of mind" component to this behavior. The belief that if you don't know that you're impaired, you're not (she didn't think she was drunk), and that it's all systems go until after there are negative consequences. Frankly, I'm not moved that she feels "humiliated" after the fact. Four 22-oz beers are GOING to impair you. She should have planned accordingly. She didn't. She's very lucky. But the other people there that night, the ones that saved her life, are luckier.
I would really really like to talk to someone right now who knows the music business, who is compassionate and business savvy and a good listener and can talk to me without imposing their own biases (at least somewhat). And right now, I can't think of who that person would be. But I need a sounding board...
So...Facebook. An interesting tool. I'm fascinated by how people use it. There are people who pop in occasionally only to self-righteously declare that they don't check in that often because they "have a life". To which I say, why bother even saying that? I know some who are wildly inappropriate there, posting detailed information about everything from the restraining orders they have out on their exes, and way too much about their inflammatory bowel disease. Some look for attention; some use it for professional publicity; many use it solely to brag.
I use it this way: I don't friend anyone that I either 1.) don't know personally, and/or 2.) is or may become a good professional contact. Even with those parameters, I've managed to rack up over 600 "friends". I know people who accept everyone who sends a request. I don't. I get not-infrequent friend requests from people I have no actual connection to, but we may have some people in common. I "ignore" those requests. I am not overly personal there, and I am careful about what I do say.
It's interesting how my perception of people in real-life is affected by what I see them do on Facebook, sometimes. My most famous friend, who is one of my heroes, is lately really annoying me, as his posts seem radically right wing (though he says he's a Libertarian), trashing everything Obama does with vitriol, and talking about how much he loves Glen Beck, and there's a little too much repeat self-deprecation that isn't - eg, calling himself "carny trash" over and over, as a sort of self term of endearment). Some people have consistently boring posts: unless there's some reason it's of interest, I don't need to know what you're watching on TV at the moment, or eating for lunch. I also don't care about how your fantasy football teams are doing, and in fact, wish there was some sort of filter that would allow me to weed out all sports-related content.
There BA, the religious nut that I met recently and added mostly to read and be amused by her religious-nutty posts. Today she said: "the more i study the book of Ezekiel the more i think we really are living in the end times...onward." She also recently posted that she'd seen a "demon" in her sleep, and it was haunting her. Fascinating that things that we might otherwise call psychosis are deemed a-ok when wrapped up in religion. But I wish her well with her demons and ends of days. Hope she eats all the fattening things she wants, and has a lot of sex (or whatever one does at one's end of days).
I block or delete people who are annoying, like the guy whose statuses consisted solely of bragging about his multiple, daily workouts. HIDE! Or the people who play games that take up valuable screen space with dumb cartoon graphics. HIDE!
I've had two people that are actual friends de-friend me on FB. One was a friend who de-friended me after I failed to say happy birthday on his "wall" (I'm serious). When I emailed him about this, he said that I just wasn't "there for him" enough. He's someone who has picked fights with me for years, and our friendship has consisted of a lot of me apologizing and coddling. Talented, funny guy, but the drama was a bit much, so I'm ok not being in touch with him. We might be sometime again in the future. Then there was a guy who is a college friend who I was in touch with consistently recently, though he was daily posting incendiary right wing stuff on his wall. I never responded to that stuff until one day when I responded back to a friend of HIS (with regards health care). I was respectful, but clearly angry. I just realized a few days ago that he's de-friended me. I emailed him to ask why, and got no response. This was someone who told me several times that I was "one of (his) favorite people on the planet". This one kinda hurts. If you're going to post button-pushing content over and over, you MUST expect that you might get some response.
On the other hand, I've reconnected with so many people, and get to hear about their lives. I've made many good business contacts, and plan to use them as I launch version 2 of my harmony website. Facebook does seem to be a place where people make themselves accessible in ways they might not otherwise. I am aware of that, and do not take anyone's privacy lightly.
Some people post great, inspirational, funny, or touching content that I wouldn't otherwise have known about. Some make me jealous with their on-the-move lives. I've made friends in real life with people who were erstwhile FB online-only, or were just acquaintances. And that's cool.
Here's a sampling of what my friends are doing today:
Disaffected young woman, getting out of car: Where are we?
Enthusiastic young man, getting out of same car: Salem!
Disaffected young woman: What are we gonna do here?
Enthusiastic young man: Walk around! Haunted Happenings!!
Disaffected young woman: ---
Looks like it's going to be an exciting day in Witch City, folks. I myself was just there to get cat food. That's how I roll.
