Usually I'd be afraid of saying this but I figure no one reads this blog so I'm safe.

 But today, there were these assemblies on teen driving, and how to be careful - and, as you can imagine, the centerpiece was Alicia. No, not Alicia - Dr. Betancourt, her father, who's been on this little pulpit ever since she died one unfortunate night last September. A lot of people spoke today - Ms. Finn showed us what she does as a volunteer firefighter at the scene of an accident; Mr. Kelly, another firefighter, played a clip of a guy being thrown around a car when it flips over after crashing; and Mr. Mullsteff - whose son, Sean, died in a crash last year in Damascus - used a driving simulator to explain the importance of defensive driving. Dr. Betancourt also did a presentation - I was with Mr. Mullsteff during it - but from what I heard, Dr. Betancourt gave an incredibly long, drawn out speech of the same sort he's been putting on for the Washington Post, 60 Minutes, and anywhere else that'll have him.

I mean, there's no reason to say anything mean about Alicia, who died so tragically. And maybe that's the problem: The school's been surrounded by this shitstorm of publicity about Alicia's death - mostly because of her dad - and of course, no one's going to suggest that he shut up. Not even when Hersh, who drove the car she was in, is still walking the halls of Blake. (Because of the proceedings he was excused from school today.) This isn't even the only death at this school this year, and definitely not the only teenager to die in a driving accident this year. But you don't hear from the families of the other twenty-odd kids who died nearly as much as you hear from Dr. Betancourt. At first it was moving, to see a father so devoted to his daughter, but now it looks like he wants the attention. My mother was a chaplain - she counsels people going through severe emotional trauma - and she says Betancourt's just grieving, except on a huge scale.

Think about it for a second: A girl living in a pretty well-off neighborhood in Montgomery County, where it seems every kid gets a car when they turn 16, dies in a souped-up car on a winding rural road late on a Friday night. Following her death, the State finally manages to pass laws restricting teen driving. She gets an art show, a documentary about her life, and a 5K run to raise money for a scholarship in her name.

Meanwhile, there was a girl this year who died of an asthma attack, a boy who got hit by a truck and is still getting better - and in the school newspaper, on the TV station (two places where Alicia was very well-liked) you hear nothing about them. I once asked Mrs. Jeweler why the morning announcements said nothing about the kid who got hit by a truck, and she said "Well, he's not dead."

I don't think it's fair. Not one bit. Looking back on today, though, I have a lot of respect for Mr. Mullsteff, whose son also died. Unlike Dr. Betancourt, he did not seek to make us all depressed. His purpose in life now, he said, was to make sure another family was not destroyed like his, and to do so, he did his best to make we understood the dangers of driving without being scared shitless. I think he did that. (In a Post article a few months ago Dr. Betancourt said he regretted not pressing charges against Hersh's family.) Mr. Mullsteff has started a defensive driving program aimed at teenagers, which I think will do a lot more than a scholarship to make sure that we never experience another weekend of five teen driving deaths.

But I can't say anything. A word against the Betancourts in Blake High School is treason - even if there are a few people who might agree this has become a circus.