Nine of my son's hometown friends are in rehab - nine friends who are nineteen or younger and not quite two years out of high school. Two even went to other states to start over, since rehab didn't take once they came back home. I guess that's re-rehab. And yet, both sets of parents still party every weekend.

If I widen the circle to include my three older sons' friends, my friends' sons and my friends, I know twenty-four people in rehab facilities. They're not there for anything exotic. They drank and drove. Then they drank some more and drove some more.

Penalties for drunk driving are getting stiff according to the police. But also according to a friend of mine, who's a police officer, every DWI arrest represents a dozen or more violations - since drunk driving is often something a person really has to work at to get caught.

In Wisconsin a few weeks ago, a 64-yar-old woman from Washington State was arrested for drunk driving three times in three days. Those days of driving around in a 3,000-pound lethal weapon with a back seat exclude the twelve hours she spent in jail.

The first time she was trying to drive out of a ditch, wearing just one shoe, and had a blood-alcohol level more than twice the legal limit.

That was at 2 p.m.

Her vacation had gotten off to rollicking start.

The next time she was stuck in the snow in a campground that was closed for the winter. She allegedly told officers she was still finishing up the box of wine she'd bought the day before.

She went to jail, but just after she was released, she was again arrested - weaving about with a half-filled bottle of wine in the car.

Finally, authorities put their foot down.

She was fined more than $3,000 and sentenced to 30 days in jail.

Thirty days in jail? The price of a weekend in California? Come on. That's not a slap on the wrist. It's a tap.

Maybe the state where we live is different from other states: One of my kids wouldn't even have a graduation party because he was so afraid someone would get drunk, drive out of the driveway and hit another car head-on -at worst, leaving the person at least mortally injured and in the position for their parents to sue us. It wouldn't have mattered that we hadn't provided the alcohol.

Of course, there is no event in Wisconsin - from a teacher's picnic to a baptism - that is complete without a keg. I'm sure that's true in other places, too, but we're especially fun folk here. When my son and two of his friends were arrested for drinking beer in a campground, one of the fathers implored us not to be “too hard on him” and to remember “how we were at that age.”

We sent him to AA at 8 a.m. for six Saturday mornings. In my family at least, my grandparents were drinkers; my parents were bonafide alcoholics and, for me, it stopped the time that Santa couldn't come until Mom and Dad rolled out of bed.

It amuses me that people spend time worrying about their seventh graders making little slits on their forearms and loading themselves with Ecstasy.

Please.

They have all the ecstasy they need in the refrigerator in the garage and a nice big helping of mortality too.