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The Depth of Problems in Our Community Today: One for the Road? Part I

Most of us in our 40s clearly remember the days of pack-racing on our longer stretches of road back in the late 70s and early 80s.

Although it was a thrill of sport for many boys there were some girl "wheelers" too who sat in the huddle of guys and partook in the conversation of whose bike was "souped up" enough to win the coveted title of the fastest rider in the pack.

During that era, we lost many teens. The funerals were held. The tears were shed. The gloves were thrown into the grave as a sign of respect to the deceased and as an indication that the pack-racing would stop. But it didn't. It continued until the next death. Pack-racing at that time did not have much to do with drugs and drinking but more to do with the "need for speed".

Although the road fatalities continue some 30 years later they are increasing in number per year, with a wider age range, due more, I believe, to the pressures and ills of our society. Thirty years ago we did not have nearly half the amount of stress on our lives that we have now. If we drank, most of us understood that one was enough or we drank with our friends and stuck to the same drink of choice until a choice was made to drink no more. If our friend appeared to have had 'one too many' we found a way for him to get home safely, even if it meant we took him ourselves. Today, there's a mentality that one must impress one's friends with not only how many drinks one can consume, but with how many different varieties of liquor and this manner of thinking is prevalent among our young people as well as the adults who ought to know better. But they act as if they don't! When intoxicated people leave the bars today, nobody cares.

As a teacher, I remember concerns expressed over a decade ago about the generation of children in the classrooms who were once labeled "drug babies". We began to see behaviours that were ultimately dangerous to school personnel and other students as well as behaviours which simply prevented the child from grasping even the very basic in concepts. Yet these now school-aged drug babies were expected to sit and think and work in a normal setting just like everybody else. Special schools were closed, everyone was lumped into one basket so as not to "damage a child's self-esteem" for being in an environment deemed different. Families have been breaking down rapidly for as long as we've had a drug problem. I will revisit these two thoughts in parts two and three of this column.

But the relevance here is that our community is now overflowing with many citizens who don't think rationally and cannot seem to comprehend the consequences of their actions like most "normal" people do, don't have respect for self - let alone others, and disregard the full appreciation for a good life because they've never really ever been privy to having one. These people who have no sense of belonging cannot comprehend the magnitude of their actions and how their actions affect others, including their family members.

There is a tree on the southern grounds of the Botanical Gardens whose roots stretch well beyond the property to a place across the street. To cut that tree and not remove the root does not solve the problem that tree may cause. The tree will return in full bloom. The problems that we are experiencing today are similarly deep rooted and sometimes we have to look well beyond what's in front of us and dig deep to get to the root cause of the problems. The reactive solutions and those who mean well in creating them are only skimming the surface at best while we continue to lose more people to the road in the first four months of the year.

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