Does this stuff happen in your community, or is it just Westchester, New York?

A few years ago, a father was arrested in a nearby town for providing booze and a stripper at a party he held in his home for his son's football team.

I passed a guy on the street today who used to smoke marijuana with his daughter, who was a classmate of Carrick's in ninth grade.

I sat in on a meeting yesterday among people representing a countywide organization who were planning programming that would attract teenagers. I answered their question about what teens do for entertainment in our town thusly: "Sports are big here, and the arts, and poker, and drinking in woods or at the waterfront." They beamed at the last revelation.

"Of course drinking goes on everywhere, but you're the first one to admit it," one of the representatives said.

I resisted the temptation to deliver my spiel about the elephant on Main St.

But the story that has really fascinated me for the past few days, though I can't say it surprises me, is about the Westchester mom who took her 15-year-old daughter and a 16-year-old friend to a club in the city that was doing a Ramones retrospective. On a myspace.com page, the woman, calling herself "RoccerMom," wrote that she wanted to "rediscover her punk rock roots."

On the way home from the club, close to 5 a.m. (on a school night), they all stopped for a bite to eat in Dobbs Ferry, the next town up from us. Mom, whose exact alcohol level has not been revealed except that it was over the legal limit, got back on the parkway going the wrong way. She crashed head on into another car. Her daughter's friend, riding in the back seat without a belt, was killed.

Of course it's not just our village, town, county. It's everywhere, and it's often us, not the kids, who need help the most. We need to overcome denial, learn to set limits like parents instead of enabling like buddies, and to make sure our own behavior is a halfway decent model to start with.

The mom's lawyer said: "Clearly, Mrs. Ciarcia is a responsible (woman) who exercised poor judgment one evening of her life. She will be responsible to remember that for the rest of her life."

He may very well be right, Mrs. Ciarcia's RoccerMom fantasies aside, and that's probably the most sobering thought of all. I can see something similar happening to people I know, and my heart aches for everyone involved.

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