If you had a million dollars, today you would use some of it to bail your college-age son out of jail. He was arrested last night for vehicular manslaughter after running down a teenage girl while driving drunk. This is the first time he ever got arrested, or even a traffic citation for that matter. But witnesses say he apparently looked like he wanted to keep driving after he hit her. After the crash, a bystander ran and stood in front of your son’s car and put his hands on the hood to keep him from pulling away. One of the tires was flat too.
You’d bail him out, which would cost around $50,000. Then you might use the rest of that million dollars to hire a really good lawyer who could perhaps keep him out of jail. What he did was horrible and stupid and you agree with the laws that might put him behind bars. But you would do anything right now to make as much of it go away as you can. He’s your son, and you wanted him to finish college and then show you what kind of life he can make for himself. If you had a million dollars, maybe his whole life wouldn’t be already decided with one incredibly stupid mistake at age nineteen.
You have no idea what really happens in prison. If you had a million dollars, maybe your son wouldn’t have to find out for you. All you can think about now is whether, when you visit him, will you talk through those glass partitions? Or will you get to sit in one of those big open rooms with all the tables where women bring babies to show to their inmate fathers?
Happy If You Had A Million Dollars Day!
