As a generation, we have been told that drinking and driving is a sure-fire way to end up in jail, with a D.U.I, or worse, dead.

We have heeded warnings.

We have read the headlines that have sent shivers down our spines. They are always a different variation of, “Another Family Mourns Tragic Death as a Result of Drunk Driving.”

We have heard of innocent and guilty lives being taken too soon from this world.

We have heard the horror stories of mothers holding their newborn babies' lifeless bodies in the middle of the street because someone didn’t just call a cab.

And yet, the days always go on. The world keeps on spinning. After all, those stories weren’t about you.

Those warnings seem to be just that, warnings.

Those headlines fade into a distant part of our brains.

Those innocent lives, though never forgotten, were just strangers to us.

Those images of the brokenhearted mothers trying to piece together their broken children slip away.

All of these stories that they tell you about could never possibly be about you, but then it happens. Someone you know loses their invincibility. It may have been your neighbor, your relative, or even your partner in chemistry sophomore year of high school. Everybody knows someone who dies from drunk driving eventually. Like the kid who everybody once knew whose life was taken a day too soon. He or she was either a victim of a drunk driver’s careless mistake, or, in fact, the culprit.

When it first happens, you scroll through Instagram and see paragraph-long posts notifying you that your high school buddy died instantly in a head-on crash and the cause was his 1.6 Blood Alcohol Content.

You think back to every time you got behind the wheel while you were intoxicated, and the fear of 'what could’ve been' swallows you whole. The tears keep falling because you realize that this could’ve easily been you. That day you make a promise to yourself that you will never drink and drive again, so help you God. Never.

You claim that you will never forget the comments that were posted that told the stories of a boy who knew better, or the pictures from better days with captions that read, “I wish I could’ve said goodbye, I’ll miss you and you will never be forgotten.”

There was the immediate, sick to your stomach feeling that you would never see the boy that you once went to school with again. There was the denial. You couldn’t believe that this was true. There was the questioning of how this could happen and of course, the “he is too young to die.” That could’ve been you.

You may not have even known him from Adam, but he was from your town, your school, an insignificant member of your life, but your life nonetheless. That made this real. That made this story stick above all of the rest. I guarantee you shed a tear or two. After all, this could’ve easily been you.

You could never erase the image of his casket being carried out of the church by his six best friends as they wept what seemed like never-ending tears. That could have been your friend. Your sister. Your family. That could’ve been you.

They become the town tragedy.

The example to live by.

Until they aren’t.

Being the teenagers that we are, we file this story into cabinets in our brains and lock it away for a rainy day. We continue living our lives because we believe that we are untouchable. We are so young, so alive, and so invincible- or so we think.

A couple of years pass and although he is honored every year, that initial shock factor has worn off. That feeling you first felt when this tragedy was fresh is gone. The iron vow that you made to yourself that you would never drink and drive again has become soft around the edges. You seem to forget that that could’ve been you.

It’s a tale as old as time: you have one too many beers at a party one night and you get behind the wheel of your car and drive home. Although everything looks like one big blur, you make it home, safe and sound. You know you shouldn’t have driven, you remember that story, but you made it home without hurting yourself or anyone else, so it is no big deal, right?

The thing is, once you make it home safe just that one time you start to believe that that story was just of the one in a million. You tell yourself that that could never happen to you.

You start to push your luck, driving home every time you drink because it’s late at night and you don’t want to miss curfew and you only had a few shots, and you swear you are fine.

The more you drink and drive, the more your confidence grows. Eventually, you find yourself casually posting videos on Snapchat of you and your friends drinking in the back of a car. It is all just fun and games. Drinking in the car becomes the new norm. It is the pre game for the pre game. You listen to music as loud as the radio can go and you slowly slip away from a reality where what you are doing is illegal, incredibly dangerous, and potentially deadly.

Once the day ends, the drunk driving becomes just another fun story to tell at parties. A thing of pride, almost as if saying “OMG James remember that time we got hammered on the car ride up to Lindsey’s party!?” or “Dude, I was playing smash the bottle while I was driving home last night, you should try it, it was such a rush,” makes you cool.

Your belief that you are invincible has led you to mistakenly believe that you would never be the one being zipped up into a black body bag on the side of the highway while the coroners try to identify you so that they can notify your family. You would never swerve off the road, hit, or kill someone else, no, that could never happen to you. Somehow you believe that you are above it all. You are immune to the dangers that they preach about.

You forget. You forget about the stories. You forget about that boy that you knew. You forget that you are no superhero, but rather just flesh and blood. You forget that you are not on an episode of The Vampire Diaries; if you lose control, you will die, and you will stay dead.

You let it all slip away because the reality is too hard to face, but the solution is not. It is a simple thing, to not drink and drive. There are cabs; there are parents who would rather pick you up in the middle of the night then have the police officers pick them up to bring them to the morgue; there are designated drivers; and options to stay where you are.

There is no excuse for drunk driving. It is the most selfish act that there is. You never know who you could hurt or whose lives you could change forever, including your own. Don’t make the same mistake that that boy did, and so many more before him have done. Never let yourself forget what happened to them, let their lives mean that much. After all, It only takes one time for that to be you, for you to be the example. That boy never thought that it could happen to him, until it did.