Don't Taunt the Reaper

How to be a dickhead:

Monday morning last month, California Highway Patrol officers visited 20 classrooms at El Camino High School to announce some horrible news: Students had been killed in car wrecks over the weekend.

Classmates wept. Some became hysterical.

A few hours and many tears later, though, the pain turned to fury when the teenagers learned that it was all a hoax - a scared-straight exercise designed by school officials, with several dozen students' participation, to dramatize the consequences of drinking and driving.

School officials in the largely prosperous San Diego suburb are defending themselves against allegations they went too far.

The stunt was a twist on a program called Every 15 Minutes, which was designed in the early 1990s, when alcohol-related accidents killed someone an average of once every 15 minutes.

El Camino officials agreed to try to give students the experience of real grief.

There is more than a sufficiency of real grief in life. We don't need the schools creating it as a "learning experience."

"I think we save lives if one kid makes a better choice every time he gets in a car," she said.

Perondi said the program students got the message.

"We did this in earnest," he said. "This was not done to be a prankster."

Obviously the story about the boy who cried wolf hasn't made it to California yet.

Someone should call superintendent Perondi's office and tell him his wife and children have just been killed in a house break-in. Then when he rushes home in severe emotional distress, all the policemen can jump out from behind the couch and scream "Psych! We just wanted you to be aware that someone is murdered every 22 minutes. Hey, we did it in earnest!"

You'll note that MADD, for a wonder, is not associated with this sort of idiocy. Even that group of harpies realizes that sometimes things can be taken too far -- and if you've gone too far for MADD, you've truly stepped over the line.

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(Hat-tip to Jeff W.)