Vision of horror wakes teen
By Henry Keomaka
Waipahu High School
Drinking is a habit that one picks up of his own free will. It can be good and it can be bad. Some people like to blame their drinking habits on their problems, which comes from life and living.
But they're only blinded by their own selfishness trying to hide themselves by that hypothesis. When they get behind a wheel of a car this selfishness grows.
In the news mostly every day I see people dying in accidents where speed and alcohol were involved. In these accidents, lots of lives are taken away, innocent as well as guilty lives.
This is a story about a boy named Dan and how his life was changed.
It is a Friday night and the teens are out. Dan is with his 9-month-old child at Ma'ili Beach Park. His good friend is having a birthday party and everyone has been living it up the entire night.
Earlier that day in school Dan and his girlfriend had a fight. In an attempt to get away from his problems he went to the party. While there he started drinking, convinced that it was his girlfriend's fault and that drinking would help him feel better. It would solve things.
He drank one beer after another, and another. Blind, stubborn and not taking any advice, he gets into his car, he hears the musical group "Incubus" on the radio.
He closes his eyes for a brief moment and leaves.
As Dan is going, he gets tired. The baby is already sleeping, and right around Hakimo Road, Dan falls asleep too. He just does not know his 18-year-old life is about to end. His senior year is ruined, all for a good time.
Dan then is somehow awakened, unable to breathe. He is cold. As his eyes open they start to burn and are filled by the flooding rush of water. He tries to gasp for air, but there is none. While he slept, his car swerved to the right and went off the side of the road into the ocean.
As he gazes upon his motionless child, already dead, he tries to cry, but the tear, along with his voice, is drowned and washed away with the tides.
The water is now turning blood red from his lungs and his nose, which are bleeding and gradually filling with water. His eyes are completely red from the lack of oxygen. Dan had suffered a lot in a short period of time.
His voice woke him from the dream. Screaming, crying, sweating, he remembers the dream and what could have been his fate. Running out of the car grasping his infant child, he begs one of his friends, whom he knows has not been drinking, to take him home.
Dan saw where the selfishness of his own decision would have taken him. I hope he has seen the light. Unlike most people, he had a vision where his child's life was taken before him, then his own.
Sometimes I wonder what people would do if they had another chance.
