RIP Island Boys

I am supposed to be studying for a test in my class on Wednesday and it's just not happening.  Three boys, around my brother's age, 19 or 20, were killed in a car accident night before last.  The driver was drunk and passed another car on a dark road on Whidbey Island, where I grew up.  She lost control and hit a tree.  The tree was found in the passenger seat and the car burst into flames before the three boys could get out.  My brother, the athletic president of his high school for 2 years in a row, is part of a large group of kids who are all friends and immediately started posting photos and memories of these innocent boys on facebook. It just breaks my heart... and makes me want to puke.

Ironically, I am studying the chapters on adolescence in my book for my test.  I just typed my notes about risk taking and how invincible teens think they are - always protected from harm simply because they lack the experience to understand consequences.  Speeding? Drunk driving?  We won't crash... Unprotected sex?  Those warty weird growths couldn't happen to me... and forget getting pregnant.  That's just for those sluts on MTV.  I wish it were true.  I wish teens could get covered in bubble wrap with monitors strapped around their ankles so that parents would always know their whereabouts.

I know it's the way it works, and I was there once too.  I've had friends pass because of freak accidents.  I've attended funerals for kids that were too young and too good to go.  I just googled "fatal whidbey crash" to find out the details, and the third website was the newspaper clip about a boy who died while I was in high school, Jesse Travis.  They were speeding and he was ejected from the car when it crashed.  It wasn't the news I was searching for, but there it was, details from a crash I remember crying about 11 years ago.

My thoughts and prayers are with all of the friends and families of the boys that died Friday night on Wilkinson Road. 

Please don't drink and drive.

http://www.southwhidbeyrecord.com/news/133752268.html