Drinks, anyone?

After spending a small portion of the day working on my new book, "101 Things You Didn't Know About Sex," specifically writing about oddball animal mating rituals, I began doing the research on a newspaper story I'm working on about a new law being proposed in Westchester called the Social Host Law that basically throws the book or a portion of the book at parents who knowingly allow their underage offspring to throw drinking parties. Or who provide the booze or turn a blind eye to what's going on in the pool house. Up until now, as long as you didn't buy the booze or if you happened to not be at home, you couldn't be held accountable. That's all about to change if this new, more Draconian law is signed into the county legislature. 

A friend who recently held such  party told me she's so upset by the investigation the police are conducting about her son's graduation bash (ratted on as she was two weeks after the event by her next door neighbor with whom she's been feuding for years -- over a pool house, no less) that she's literally shitting blood. "I have colitis," she informed me on the phone.  No one was hurt at her party. There was no property damage. No one on the street even called the police that night to complain of any noise. Off duty local police officers were even at the party, functioning as security and overseeing the parking of all the kids' cars. At the end of the day other than embarrassment and possibly having the family's name in the paper if they do indeed have to answer to some charge, the initial punishment for breaking the Social Host Law is a fine of $250. In Bedford that's not much money, about what it costs for 4 people to have dinner out. What, I wonder, constitutes a party? Can parents be arrested for breaking the Social Host Law if they offer their kid a glass of wine with dinner in their own home? Do "other people" have to be present to make it a party? I sure don't know.