Cellular phone use while driving:

How many accidents are caused by dialing/texting while driving?

What laws have been put in place to reduce these incidents?

Who are the buggest culprits?

How does it compare to othe distractions? DUI? OUI?

What are the alternatives?

Are there penalaties?

Fatalaties?

Text Wrestling

Author Jennifer Senior in “All joy and no Fun” describes the joys of raising a child and the data that attempts to prove that parents are less happy than non-parents. In her opening lines, Jennifer describes a scene where her 2-year-old boy tickles her heart with happiness only to instill a deeper questioning of its true validity moments later. Jennifer describes how her short lived joy turns to disappointment and anguish when her son begins to misbehave and violate her house hold rules.

Jennifer states that studies have been conducted that show that working mothers, when presented with a list of options, rank childcare at the near bottom of the list of pleasurable activities. It appears that working mothers prefer to do household chores to caring for their own children. Even with the published result of studies like this, people continue to have children all over the globe on a daily basis.

One might wonder the usefulness of children beyond the continuance of the species. In years past children were viewed as productive contributors to a families survival strategy. However, long gone are the days of child labor for the means of maintaining a family farm or small town store. We have become more sophisticated, technologically advanced and morally tailored into thinking that these practices are archaic at best.

Modern children are being molded at a younger age to achieve academic superiority. Children aspire to attend expensive elitist organized activities and higher education in search of that ever-necessary college degree. Yet still the presence of technology seems to be somewhat counter productive to this search. Children have greater likelihood of distraction in the way of computers, video games and movies.

Jennifer identifies the difference in levels of happiness when comparing parents European Countries to those of the USA. European countries tend to provide greater term maternity leave periods and government subsidized health care programs. It is identified that women that do not have to worry about childcare, education and healthcare immediately following birth have greater levels of happiness.

Unhappy parents are comprised of both genders, male and female. However, it can be said that relationships status, gender and wealth seem to play an important part in determining just how unhappy a parent may be. Wealthier parents were unhappier than their less wealthy peers. Yet single parents are less happy than that of parents that are together. The common denominator in this equation remains, the more children the greater the multiplier.

Children are ever-present sources of stress in a parent’s life. Parents tend to have greater frequency of arguments due to situations that may have been caused or incited by their having children.

While children may seem to be the downfall of a once peaceful union, there will come a time when a parent will look fondly upon memories of rearing their young. Long after the sleepless nights and stress over paying for piano lessons or an expensive Ivy League college education, a parent will find joy in the times spent together.

Personal Essay

In October of 1997, I enlisted in the United States Coast Guard. Fresh out of High School and barely old enough to vote I decided that I needed to do something other than go to college, I just wasn’t ready. I had shuffled back and forth between several different branches of the Military when I finally decided on the Coast Guard. The peacetime missions that the Coast Guard conducted had lured me in. For me, the biggest draw of all was Search and Rescue.

In December of 1997, I had completed my basic training in Cape May, New Jersey and had been assigned to my first unit. I had been issued orders to a heavy weather search and rescue unit in Menemsha, Massachusetts.

I remember the first time my crew was dispatched on a true heavy weather mission. We had been training relentlessly for this moment, and running down to the boat, I was confident I was ready.

We cast off our lines and headed out to rescue a disabled commercial fishing boat been caught in a storm that turned a calm ocean into a churning monster. We approached the mouth of the jetty to leave the harbor into Menemsha Sound, a trip that was typically effortless. When we reached sound, we were immediately tossed into an ocean of fifteen-foot breaking waves, a precursor of the trip to come.

The transit across the sound had never made me nervous before. The trip was a daily routine, the same one we would make for our training missions. Today was much different. The waves became progressively larger and before I realized, we were in the middle of a steady set of thirty-foot waves. It was wet and cold. The salt water tossed the forty-four foot boat like a cork, lifting it up and burying the entire bow into the face of the next wave. It was the first time I had seen blue water crash over the top of the captain’s chair. We were pushing the limitations of the boat. I peered over to our coxswain; he was a salty older man, experienced, a twenty-five years veteran. He was restless and appeared uneasy. I knew we were in for a long trip.

We limped to the area we had been dispatched, battered and beaten by the waves. . A rescue helicopter had been dispatched from nearby Otis Air Force Base to assist us with our rescue mission. When we arrive on the scene of the mission, we were notified that the rescue helicopter was returning to base because the weather was too rough. We were the only unit that was capable of helping the vessel in duress.

The disabled boat was at the mercy of the ocean, the fishing gear whipping around the deck and banging off the sides of the pilothouse. The passengers on board were clinging to the stanchions of the rail and screaming for help. The boat was getting dangerously close to the rocks. It was time for us to act.

The coxswain shouted orders to the crew and we acted just as we had during our training, it was instinctual. All of the pieces were coming together. We maneuvered closer to the vessel, our hull smashing against the boat with every violent jerk of the waves. One by one, we plucked the fishermen off the boat. Each approach, a new challenge, time was running out. With all of the fisherman safely secured in the rescue boat’s survival compartment, our mission was complete. The fisherman watched powerlessly as their boat pounded against the rocks, abandoned. We turned into the face of the waves and headed back across the sound to the pier.

When we tied up to the pier the fishermen disembarked the boat as we stowed or rescue equipment reading for the next mission. I watched as one of the fishermen knelt down and kissed the pier with tears in his eyes. Reality finally set in. We had rescued six men, six experienced fishermen.

I will never forget the feeling of accomplishment that came with that and every other successful mission. The dump of adrenaline that came with every heavy weather mission. I was once asked, “What is it like?” “What’s it fell like to be out in that?” My response was; it’s like standing up on a rollercoaster, going through a carwash in the middle of the winter.