Murders are almost routine in Chicago, let’s be honest, but this one had people shaking their heads.
A man shot an eight year old girl to death. The girl’s father who was there tackled the shooter and shot him in the face.
Unusual, sure. But the thought passed through my mind when I first heard this story on the news. “I bet that girl screams a lot when she plays outside.”
Instantly, I was a little ashamed of myself at having such a thought. I mean, really, that’s where my mind instantly goes?
See, my apartment building has a front courtyard, and plenty of shrieking kids in it. They live here, and they apparently cannot play games together without screaming like banshees with their hands caught in a car door. And sometimes, they are outside playing until ten or eleven at night. They drown out my television, for crissakes.
Now don’t get me wrong. I never once thought about taking a shotgun to any of them. But when this other kid got killed, that’s what flashed through my mind. And I was freakin’ right!
I moved into a McMansion on a big lot ~20 years ago (!). The neighbors next door had ~4 and 6yo girls and an ~8yo boy. Who played together outside in their own large yard most of every day when the weather was nice. Real painfully wholesome Midwest white bread folks. Might’ve been Mormon.
The little one shrieked every second she was outdoors. The sound of her standing still, running happily, chasing her brother, playing with her doggie, falling and skinning a knee, or being dismembered by a passing mountain lion were indistinguishable. The kids were good about staying in their yard which meant she was a mere 100 yards from my house. Her voice was much more penetrating than was our TV 10 feet from me.
I often commented to my now-late first wife that if a mountain lion ever did make a move on her, nobody in the neighborhood would pay her shrieks the slightest heed.
Still no excuse to ever hurt a kid, but damn that noise can get tiresome.
I know the incident you speak of; haven’t heard the blurb you tagged. I was wondering why the kid was shot; I figured it was an accident - they were aiming for someone else.
I’m sitting here gob-smacked. What the hell? What ever happened to proportional response? In what universe is the proper response to “kids screaming too loud” to shoot the kid in the face? I live in an exurb of Chicago. I have a state highway running past my house. I get very annoyed when my windows are closed, my air conditioning is on high, and I hear a passing car’s radio louder than my TV. I have NEVER thought about running outside and shooting the ignorant bastard.
Thank you @Two_Many_Cats2 for reminding me that even if a kid screams all the time that you shouldn’t kill them. You don’t want to lose sight of something like that.
You shouldn’t feel bad for having an active mind. We all should feel bad that such a thing has happened but that’s not any reflection of a random thought that passed through your mind.
Though they should not be outside screaming that late. Sometimes later in the evening my own kid is noisy and I remind her that there are probably people trying to sleep, and that’s generally enough to get her to quiet down. When parents don’t even bother, they are assholes.
But not even in the same universe as the asshole who shot the kid. This belongs in the Evil MFer thread.
There’s a kid who lives next door, and I genuinely think that the kid has some speech difficulties because he just yells and howls all the time. Irritating? Yes. But not rage-inducing.
While this is true (i.e. that the noise is one small humans naturally make), it’s also a behaviour that children can be trained out of. When the children’s guardians choose not to do so, however, the only recourse is to suffer until they grow out of it.
Sure, but you get to a point where you have to decide if what they’re doing is disruptive enough for to justify killing a kid’s fun. Frankly, forcing a kid to never be noisy is being more of an asshole than letting them run wild. I don’t advocate trying to turn A Quiet Place into a documentary.
Don’t be noisy over a certain level, understood. Don’t be noisy in a certain place, or at certain times, understood. And as I said, I do that. I mean, my kid has been trained, that’s why all it takes is a reminder, as I mentioned earlier. But she forgets when she gets excited, especially if she’s running around with friends, because she’s a kid.
I’m generally not one to gripe when kids are being noisy in the appropriate time and place. Like, say, a yard in the middle of the day during Summer. Or a park. Because I’m not a crotchety asshole. (Well, yet, I still have time.)
I wish parents would teach their kids that the specific scream sound should never be emitted except in true emergency situations. It’s boy crying wolf.
Those little kid who scream their heads off like it’s bloody murder when they’re just having fun - how would their parents recognize that sound differently when the kid is in fact one day getting dragged off by an abductor, or just suffered some serious injury?
Yes. But that’s part of training them, right? It takes time, and kids can’t (and shouldn’t) be policed by parents 24 / 7. That’s reasonable.
I only mentioned it because I’ve known shriekers who were being trained, and those who weren’t, and there’s a difference. (There’s also children who are prone to shrieking, and those who aren’t.)
My neighbours’ kids’ noises annoy me. But I am easily annoyed by noise, so I consider it my problem and just wear earplugs or headphones or both. I think that’s reasonable. I hope we can all agree that adults who shoot children are not being reasonable about it.
I have friend who has a tad more of a short fuse than I do deal with a screaming girls parent. I guess he had said something to the mother who just dismissed him and told her husband who just shrugged it off also.
The next time the shrieking was going on he knocked on their door and the husband answered. My friend kind of looked down and mumbled something. When the guy leaned in and asked “what?” my friend had taken a deep breath and screamed as loud as he could in the guys face. He said the guy practically shit himself and hit the deck thinking my friend was about to attack him.
He then yelled at the husband “What? You don’t like the sound of screaming? Well neither do I !!” and walked away.
He said they were a lot more attentive to their kid after that. Probably more in fear that my friend was a nut than anything else so I guess if was pretty effective.
We have a shrieker, screamer, crier, slapper, biter, kicker, tattletale all rolled into one cute little 5 yo girl.
She’s been screaming since day one.
I think we’re blind and deaf to it. We never notice til other people are around.
Son-of-a-wrek and DIL have 4 kids. She’s the only one like this. Of all the grandwrex.
They’ve tried everything possible.
She was a nightmare in kindergarten. At the end of the school term she finally got a little better at school. But the afternoons were horrendous. She just had to get it all out.
We still have hope she can function in a normal society one day. She’s very smart. But is just unhappy alot.
