No, I just took a brief hiatus. Clearly, I’d forgotten what it was that made us tick. My apologies to the high and the mighty.
No, there hasn’t been any vitriol in your case. I apologize. But the general feeling in this thread, to which you’ve contributed but by no means are solely responsible, is that the guy got what he had coming, and furthermore that this is an occasion to ridicule him for not having achieved, at sixteen years of age, the pinnacle of good judgement that we apparently require from all citizens of the earth if we are not to run them down on the highway. I won’t name names and attribute this moral crime and that to each particular person, but suffice it to say that I do consider you part of the crowd who wishes to bring him back to life just to stone him. The rudeness with which you have treated me in the recent past when I tried to help you is a major part of why I can’t buy into your backpedal.
As for the rest of you, what ever happened to “There but for the grace of God go I”? Here at the Dope, we celebrate stories of youthful misadventure, and elevate their writers to godlike status; yet if their youthful indiscretions had led to a downward spiral that ended up with them staggering around on the highway in a drug-induced stupor, not a bunch of hilarious tales with which to regale their friends after finding their inner voice of reason, we would be circling the wagons and calling for their beheading for the good of the gene pool. How might we regard the venerated Master Wang-Ka if he had impregnated a young Texas bird on one of his drunken romps and spiraled into depression and madness? I implore all of you to chew on that for a good while.
By the way, I don’t mean to impugn Argent Towers here (although eleanorigby has decided to pick him out as the sole source of the problem for some reason), or any other poster in particular, for that matter, because the majority of respondents to this thread have contributed to the general feeling I mentioned above. You’re all responsible for this callousness, and I only hope that you never have to walk a mile in the boy’s shoes.
OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE. My eyes rolled so far out of my head, and with such vigor, they knocked down the east wall of my house when I read this.
My grandmother had my dad at 16 (10mos, 4days after marrying my grandfather) and stayed married until the day my grandpa died. She remains a good mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother to this day, and has never been molested or molested anybody else thank-you-very-fucking-much.
I haven’t backpedalled in the least. There is nothing to backpedal. His life was short and sad. Why on earth would anyone here want him to come back to life so that we could stone him? Wth? Where is this supposed foaming at the mouth vengeance coming from? Even AT has said that he now sees the kid in a more human light. What is so venerable about getting a girl pregnant at a young age, not abandoning her, then ending your life by running into traffic? His becoming a father and dying the way he did are unrelated except that they both happened to him. One did not cause the other (then again, he may have had some kind of freakish post-partum Couvade syndrome which made him suicidal. Or something–just kidding!). I don’t think anyone here claimed that he died because he was a young dad. And I certainly have no desire to run him down–or anyone. The driver that hit him will live with that horror the rest of his life.
No clue who Master Wang-Ka is. Don’t care. It’s “youthful indiscretion” now to run out onto a highway full of cars? How, exactly, did you have fun as a teen? That is just bizarre as hell. I made my share of mistakes, but this boy took “youthful indiscretions” to a whole new level. You can’t have it both ways. Either he was suffering from some sort of mental illness or he was gamboling about with youthful hijinks. Which is it?
We shall walk at least a mile in this boy’s shoes because we will all die someday. I can guarantee that I will not die by running out onto a road with busy traffic. His is a stupid and unnecessary death–that doesn’t make him stupid or unnecessary. Comfort yourself as you may if you find this story disturbing. I refuse to deal in euphemism while exploring it.
In his defense, Argent Towers has dialed his response to this waaaaaaaaaay back.
The driver is the real piece of shit here. 21 different aliases? A metric fuck-ton of arrests for pretty damned bad behavior? Lock this one up before HE breeds. Please.
I agree and the phrase you’re looking for is “cast aspersions” as in throw slander at someone.
The article also says that the accident threw him 45 meters in the air and resulted in multiple fatal injuries. Which would seem to me that he wasn’t laying down in the road when it happened. Could you be thrown in the air being run over? Seems unlikely.
Seriously? That just sounds so bizarre to me. I never go anywhere without a knife if I can help it. (Not even as a weapon, since I often carry a gun anyway) A knife is just a really useful tool for many purposes, and you never know when you might need one.
No, knocking someone up is youthful indiscretion, and I think it’s safe to say that either (a) the fallout from that event or (b) the circumstances that led to that event probably sent him into a downward spiral that ended on that highway. Hence this part, with the important parts bolded so that you’ll have to try even harder to miss them:
How can staggering around on the highway in a drug-induced stupor lead to staggering around on the highway in a drug-induced stupor? That’s one single event that ends a spiral, not the start of a spiral that…ends in the same event? Use yer head. I know you’re not stupid.
No, it’s “youthful indiscretion” to get a girl knocked up. How did I have fun as a teen? I did drugs and slept with every girl that showed the slightest interest in me. Presumably, this kid started with the same thing. There but for the grace of [insert deity here] go I.
Both, although I wouldn’t classify the highway thing as “youthful hijinks.” But getting a girl knocked up was surely a result of youthful hijinks, and lying down on the highway was, by definition, a result of some sort of mental illness. So, at the very least, first one and then the other.
You can? You’re 100% certain that you’ll never lose it? It’s simply not possible at all that you’ll lose it at some point, maybe as a result of some unforeseen series of catastrophes? No? Not even a tiny chance? The rest of the human race envies you, then.
I don’t know what he’s talking about but if I had to guess, I’d say that swords were considered noble because knights carried swords, and daggers were something that were used to kill in a sneak attack, dishonorably. L4L am I close to the truth there?