Hi! Welcome to Detritus. In this column, I am revisiting old writing! Right now, I’m digging through all my old columns from my first job at my hometown newspaper, the Grain Valley Pointe. You can read the first installment in this series here.
One of the best parts of being a journalist in the digital age is coming up with your own imagery. Sometimes that means photographing yourself dressed up like Cher, and other times it means sending yourself a text using your pink Samsung Seek and then taking a photo of the screen with your point-and-shoot camera.
In this column from March 2011, a sixteen-year-old Hattie writes about the dangers of distracted driving. While it’s true that, by this point in my life, I had failed my driver’s license test three times, I went on to pass with A PERFECT SCORE the following summer. So everything in this (sorta preachy) article still stands!
Please, do not text and drive. Do not email and drive. Do not navigate your music and drive. Do not TikTok and drive, do not Slack and drive, certainly do not Duolingo and drive (you know who you are!!!), and do not BeReal and drive.
Because when you drive distracted, THIS is whose heart you’re breaking:
Nothing to LOL about: A message to anyone who texts while driving
Originally published in The Grain Valley Pointe March 30, 2011
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