You know, I understand, up to a point, a 16-year-old thinking that he was invulnerable enough to get away with this. (Well, actually, I don't, but I and most of the 16-year-olds I knew were bright enough to understand the whole "fire bad + 18 foot drop hurt = fire + 18foot drop really REALLY hurt" equation. Apparently, there are more and more people out there to whom this equation is not obvious. The genepool is being purged even as I speak, no doubt.) In any event, maybe the teen has some excuse for himself, but his father is absolutely and completely baffling. I mean, the best I can figure is that the stepfather was maybe exercising the sort of "tough love" that parents of toddlers do: "If he touches the hot thing and burns himself a little, then he'll understand that he shouldn't do that." Touching a hot pot is somehow radically different from jumping off a roof onto a flaming pool table, I would think.
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
Search entries:
12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!