Busted!
The other day I was driving downtown and I pulled up at a stoplight. I was jamming to my tunes and not paying a whole lot of attention until the car next to me tooted its horn and revved the engine. I looked over and saw a sporty little black number loaded with high school guys. They were waving and smiling. I have to say I was flattered. It’s been at least a couple years since I was in high school. And then I realized they weren’t flirting with me . . . they were flirting with my dog!
There’s just something about German Shepherds that commands respect, awe and, apparently, flirting. They’re incredibly intelligent and athletic dogs. Not to brag or anything, but Max graduated from Level II Obedience at just 6 months old. And he’s bilingual—he understands conversational English (“Go get me the frisbee, silly boy.”) but, all his commands are in German (Hier! Platz! Bleib!). A night on the town for him is going to Agility class and scaling the A-Frame.
Max’s hero, who lives here in town, is King Riley, a police dog with a real job tracking down drugs. Chances are nobody’s flirting with him when he alerts his partner that someone’s hiding drugs, although I have seen high school girls swoon when he demonstrates his athletic prowess. There’s no doubt about it. You mess with drugs and King Riley finds out, you’re busted.
Drug users and pushers try to kid themselves that no one is going to find out, but drugs always catch up with you in the end, on way or another. Julia Diaco sure thought nobody knew she was dealing drugs, but her “client” turned out to be an undercover officer. Later, drug-sniffing dogs found marijuana and cocaine in her dorm room at NYU. Now she’s facing 22 charges against her. The most serious carries a sentence of up to 25 years in prison. Not cool, Jules.
If she’s proved guilty though, Julie will join the explosion of girls committing drug crimes. “According to a December 2003 government report, the number of girls arrested on drug charges exploded by 200 percent between 1992 and 2001, almost double the rate for boys over the same period. Michael Dennis, Ph.D., a drug counselor and the head of a government advisory panel about teens and drugs, says that as gender barriers disappear, more girls are engaging in risky behaviors once thought to be the domain of boys.”[i]
There’s only one answer to drugs – taking them, selling them, or making a collage out of them. The answer is ”NO, nada, no way, no thanks, no how.” Or, as Max and King Riley would say—if they could talk— “Nein!” That’s one choice you’ll never regret and it won’t cost you a single second of jail time. Can’t beat that.
Until next time, have fun, be cool, and make good choices,
Céleste
[i]How Could This Girl Be a Drug Dealer?, Mary Green, TeenPeople, August 2004, p. 183
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