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Dear Paris,

Welcome to the real world.....you know, the one without the scripts, producers or directors. That's the one "I" live in. In fact, that's the one most of us live in. For better or worse, we know that for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction. Unlike you, when we make a mistake we understand that there will be consequences. We expect it.

It's the fear of consequences that keeps us from making the same mistake over and over again. I'm very sorry that you are having to learn the hard way. Doing it “your way”, wasn't working. In fact, you blatantly disobeyed a court order with complete disregard for what could have happened. Thank heavens someone stepped in to keep you from harming yourself or an innocent bystander.

In the real world, people are expected to abide by the law. If we drink, we simply don't get behind the wheel. It's that simple. Cars can be as lethal an object as a machine gun. Being couped up in a prison may be the worst fate you can possibly imagine. However, be thankful that is all the “punishment” you've been asked to endure. I use the word “endure” because it infers somehow that you will suffer. I sure hate that for you but it's time for a reality check. So far, being an insolent, spoiled brat has gotten you nowhere. In fact, as the days go by, you are making a bigger and bigger fool of yourself.

I'm wondering if community service would make any impact on you. I doubt it. Tickets haven't. Fines haven't. What I am proposing, would possibly leave a longer lasting impression on you. I think you should have to work in a Rehab facility that deals with young men and women, who unlike you, have suffered a major brain injury or a spinal cord injury as the result of a drunk driver. And, when you're finished with that course of penance, then you should have to work with parents in grief counseling, who've lost a child to a drunk driver.

You'd learn very quickly, that while the effects of alcoholic pleasures for you, or someone just as hard headed as you, are fleeting the pain caused to victims and their families burn forever in their minds. Oh, yes. It gets easier as time goes on, but it never completely goes away.

You've never had to bury a child. You've never had to watch someone struggling to relearn to walk or write their own name. You've never had to teach someone how to place a catheter temporarily in order to drain their bladder or insert a suppository so that they can have a bowel movement. You see, the simplest things that you take for granted are no longer simple for people like this. These guys would gladly change places with you in order to have their own lives restored. Forty days would mean absolutely nothing to them.

So, when i see you on the news with your face red from crying and you whining about going back to jail for 40 days to serve the sentence that you deserve, I have no sympathy whatsoever. None. In fact, it pisses me off. In the real world fame means nothing to the rest of us. It will never ensure happiness. It can't buy bodily functions or mobility or cognition. It won't help you dress yourself or feed yourself when you can longer do these things for yourself. It won't keep you turned to prevent bedsores.

The only thing I would like to see from you is for you to take your punishment the same way Martha Stewart did-with class and dignity. Hold your head up high and admit that you were wrong. Be damned thankful you are not lying in a hospital bed with a ventilator tube hanging out of your neck. Then and only then will I respect you for your position of so called power. Right now, it doesn't impress me in the least.

Sincerely,
Patricia Baker, RN, CRRN, P-ACM