Friends Don't Let Friends .

I feel guilty about this one. There were times in my single days when I probaby should have intervened. I had a group of female friends I hung with when I was between husbands. We were all in our mid-thirties to mid-forties, and probably looking for love in all the wrong places, as the song goes. Most of us had married young and had missed out on the fun of "playing the field;" we'd married our high school or college sweethearts and had gone from living at home with our parents, to being married, and eventually, divorced.

If we had kids, we were childless on weekends and school vacations when our offspring would go spend time with their dads. All of a sudden we had a new-found freedom, and we were somewhat heady with it! We frequented singles clubs, ladies' nights at lounges, and yes, we may have on occasion imbibed more than we should have.

I recall one occasion in particular when friends I'll call "Jill, Karen, and Martha" and I all went to a singles dance together. I was the designated driver, which meant I was downing diet Pepsis while the others were enjoying my share and theirs of happy juice. "Jill" was dancing with "Dan" (also a pseudonym to protect the guilty). It was obvious to me, the sane member of the group that night, that "Dan" was pretty drunk, and not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Jill, too, was tipsy, so when she came to me and said she would not be leaving with us, that she was leaving with Dan, I should have said, "No, not a good idea." Of course, she might not have listened to me if I had. I mistakenly said to myself, "Jill''s a big girl, she knows what's what."

Karen, Martha, and I left eventually, and I dropped them off at their homes, went back to mine, and went to bed. Around 3;30 am, my phone rang. It was Jill. "You've got to come get me," she said tearfully. I was awake like a shot!

"What's wrong," I asked, "Are you okay?" All kinds of emergency alarms were going off in my head.

"Just come get me," she pleaded.

"Okay, okay. I'm on my way. Where are you?" There was a long pause.

"I don't know," she answered. "I walked so far, on this dirt road, in the pitch dark." Now her voice was shaking with her audible sobs.

"Hon, I can't come get you if I don't know where you are. Stop and think, or look around. I need some kind of clue."

"I'm in an all night coffee shop."

"Not enough information. Where is the coffee shop? Can you ask someone, or look out the window and tell me what you see?"

Luckily she was able to identify her surroundings sufficiently for me to know where she was. "Stay right there. I'll be there as quick as I can." I threw on some jeans and a sweater, grabbed my purse and my car keys, jumped into my car and drove to the place she had described. I saw her through the window of the coffee shop, looking pretty forlorn. As soon as I parked and exited my car, she came running out the door towards me, and grabbed me in a huge hug!

"Thank God, you found me," she cried.

I hugged her back, then helped her into the car. She had broken one of the heels on her shoe, so she was limping awkwardly.

"Are you alright? Did he hurt you?" I was thinking maybe we would need to go to the emergency room or call the police.

She assured me she was okay physically, then proceeded to tell me what had happened. Dan's friend had dropped them off at Dan's house, which was a real dump, out on a dirt road somewhere outside of town. When they got inside, he lead her to his bedroom, and proceeded to get amorous. To make a long story short, they ended up with him passed out drunk on top of her on the bed, before anything could happen. She panicked, partly because he was a huge, dead weight on top of her, and because she wasn't sure where she was and knew there was no vehicle to get home with, because Dan's friend had dropped them off and driven away. She managed to extracate herself from under the unconcious dude and had walked back out to the main road. Luckily she had made a turn in the direction of town . After a very long walk, she found the an all-night coffee shop with a pay phone available. (These were the days before cell phones, folks.)

The hysteria had emerged as the buzz had worn off during the chilly hike to town, and she realized all the things that could have happened to her. We both were wiser as a result of that experience, but I still feel guilty that I let her leave with Dan. Friends don't let friends drink and go home with ugly men!