You're Right Fredrick Hudgin   © Copyright 2025 by Fredrick Hudgin

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

In 1982, my wife and I went to an after-work Christmas party on the Friday before Christmas. It was hosted by some friends at the bank where we both worked. The host brought out some expensive gin, and my wife and I had too much to drink. But we were in South San Francisco, it was approaching midnight, and our home was forty miles away in Concord.

“I’ll just be careful,” I told her as we walked to her car.

As we drove across the Oakland Bay Bridge, we began to argue. I don’t remember why. But I was paying more attention to the argument than to the traffic around us. Just after we passed the turn-off to Treasure Island, a flashing red light appeared in my rearview mirror. The driver of the Highway Patrol car told me via the speaker on his light bar that I was to proceed to the flat area after the bridge and to stop there. I did as he instructed.

He and his companion, another Highway Patrol officer, told me I had been weaving in my lane and gave me a field sobriety test, which I failed. They arrested me, put me in handcuffs, and slid me into the backseat of the patrol car. They let my wife drive home.

I spent the night in the drunk tank in San Francisco in my three-piece suit, along with thirty-something drunk Hispanic men. At 6 AM, I was released with my citation and a date to appear in court.

The next week, I went to the court clerk’s office and pleaded guilty to driving under the influence. I’d had all weekend to beat myself up for doing something so stupid, and this was how I had decided to deal with it. The clerk told me that, because I was pleading guilty, my citation would be reduced to reckless driving with alcohol, but that I still had to appear in court to be sentenced.

Six weeks later, I stood in front of the traffic court judge, got a tongue-lashing for driving while under the influence, was fined six hundred dollars, and assigned to a drunk driver’s class. The “class” consisted of six evening classes, held in Walnut Creek, a suburb near Concord, over a six-week period.

The first three classes were kind of what I expected:

This is what alcohol does to your body and mind, how alcohol changes what you perceive, why you do stupid things while you’re drunk, how to get help if you can’t not abuse alcohol. I day-dreamed through most of it.

The fourth class will be with me as part of my memories until I die. It changed my life.

A grizzled, gray-haired Highway Patrol officer gave a class on what he looks for when he suspects a driver ahead of him is under the influence. He gave one recounting after another about the stupid things people do when they drive under the influence, and what they said before and after he arrested them. His stories got funnier and funnier as he continued.

Finally, one of the more boisterous members of the class attendees had had enough. “You sound like you really enjoy ruining our lives!” he shouted, angrily.

In that second, all of the humor was gone from the officer’s demeanor. He turned to the guy and studied him for a moment, his face hard as stone. Then he said into the silence, “You’re right, I do. And I have ever since I pulled my first dead child out of a car hit by a drunk driver.”

I have never driven drunk again, nor will I ever.