What’s up with the snarks dude? :dubious:
In Texas, 18yo’s are allowed to serve AND sell alcohol.
And gee, I sure am glad I never got pulled over the countless times I had my kids with me when we stopped by the grocery foor food and beer for myself. Because boy, we all know how intoxicating and dangerous an unopend bottle of beer can be, especialy with kids in the car.
I am suffering from some serious disconnect here - are you liquour laws really so retarded that you can get in trouble merely for putting a few beers into the passenger footwell?
For passengers drinking beer while a designated driver is otherwise doing everything that he should?
It makes me reflect on some of the stuff I have seen and done and appreciate just how good we have it. I was stopped by the cops speeding with no lights on at 9:30pm (built up area, good street lighting so I didn’t notice). I have a carton of stubbies on the passenger seat. Was only asked if I’d been drinking - told the guy nah, going home to get tanked and pointed to the beers - he let me carry on (I would have been 18 or 19 at the time)
Friends of mine were stopped (two husbands and wives) the husbands were in the back drinking with no seatbelts, the wives driving. Guys told to put on seatbelts and be on their way.
I guess round here the cops are just happy enough to see people being responsible without worrying about passengers drinking a beer.
ETA - we have a graduated driver licensing system. If you don’t have a “full” license, there must be a fully authorised adult in the car - who is considered to be “in control” so if that person is over the limit he would get into trouble, as would the “underage” driver.
Yeah, that’d all be sensible and is probably the way Shakes would do it. (Although you can’t guarantee how you and all your friends will act once you’re drunk). But the Mom has never met Shakes, doesn’t know anything about him. He’s not a well-known uncle asking the kid to drive him around - he’s a total stranger.
There doesn’t need to be an assumption that illegal activities will be involved - although, let’s be honest, they could be. What’s ‘illegal’ changes when it comes to minors (often in an arbitrary way) and an awful lot of adults forget that - especially when they’re loosened up by alcohol.
For a start, the Mom is legally responsible for this boy (as is the Dad). If the boy got into trouble - even if it weren’t his fault or Shakes’ fault - she could end up in trouble too.
I agree he should’ve asked the mom first, I even said so upthread. I agree the whole thing is a bad idea from the mother’s point of view (she doesn’t know SHAKES). I don’t agree that the undertaking itself is a bad idea.
Sorry, maybe the snarks were over the top. I do think you oughta consider the mom’s point of view, and simply what it’s like to be the parent of a teenager. Cut her some slack as well.
Agreed. As I said before, I didn’t think that part of the deal through.
As Jamaika a jamaikaiaké points out; I’m more currious now as to what people’s thoughts are on the proposal itself.
If I saw a movie with this set-up, I’d expect them to be in some kind of deep shit by the end of the first half-hour.
I’m still curious what you mean by saying you’re not trying to “turn” him.
Yeah, that’s called an “open container” violation in most states - no open containers of alcohol in a vehicle regardless of who claims who is doing the drinking. The assumption is that the driver is drinking (or is just about to) and hands off his drink to a passenger. I think the assumption also extends to something like ‘if you can’t stop drinking for as long as it takes you to drive somewhere, you’re probably not going to monitor your drinking.’ This pretty much means that if you have a half-full bottle of liquor, it has to go in the trunk for transporting it elsewhere.
Trucks don’t have trunks. If he had a toolbox or tonneau cover over the back, he might put it back there.
ETA: I’ve seen ‘open container’ extended to old ‘dead soldier’ beer cans which obviously were emptied weeks before the stop. Used to be, every redneck with a pickup truck had a few cans rattling around in the bed; not anymore, as they’re considered fair game.
Leaving aside the bit about predators, Salem has laid out some very good reasons why it was a bad idea to ask the kid.
Look - The kid is seventeen years old. What is he going to do while you all are in the bars? Sit in the parking lot? Come in with you? If he comes in, what will he be doing in the bar? If he’s like every single other seventeen year old in the world[sup]1[/sup], he’ll be trying to get someone to buy him drinks.
I understand your intentions, and on paper it looked like a good idea. Seriously though, you really fucked up by not talking to the parents first.
1 - Slight hyperbole - I know. Deal with it.
Yeah - I was ready to jump all over an over-protective mother freaking out becuase a gay man was talking to her son.
Are minors allowed into bars in Texas? If not, that’s an awful lot of sitting in the truck for the kid while you guys are inside the bar(s).
In school the teachers always told us to go with our first impulse when answering multiple-choice questions. Go back and change your answer because you had some “brainstorm” and most of the time, you’d find out you’d been right originally.
I dunno … just seemed relevant here! 
Sounds like the original taxi idea was the way to go, man.
Geez - I need to read the thread through first. Sorry.
Like I said above, it was a good idea on paper. If you had asked the parents first, and limited it to “drop us off at the bar, and pick us up at one-thirty,” As a parent, I might have gone for it. It changes the deal from, “Come with us on a pub-crawl,” to “This is how responsible adults behave.”
Yeah, sit in the truck. He’s free to use the radio or bring any books, magazines, hand held devices that he wants to keep him busy.
I know I used to do it with my parents when they used to go bowling or to the bars on their dart league nights.
Except, my parents were a little off their rocker. They used to go inside the bar, get hammered, then drive home with me in the car. 
Hey, it was a different time back then.
I don’t see anything wrong with this. I did similar any number of times, more than once it got me into places I wouldn’t otherwise have been able to go (DDs weren’t carded, often got free soda, and regularly got in without cover). Heck, more than once I’d ended the evening with more phone numbers than the guys I was hauling around. The biggest downside was trying to get a minivan full of drunks back to places I’d never been before; I guess this wouldn’t be an issue the age of the GPS.
Had I been living at home at the time, my mother would’ve been okay with it if she either knew you, or knew people who did. If she didn’t, she’d want to talk to you before she gave her oaky. I don’t see that you needed to talk to the kids mom before you talked to him, as long as you’d have made sure he’d gotten parental permission before the event, the order shouldn’t matter, at least for a 17 year old.
I have 3 kids aged 18-21, and am of mixed opinions.
On the one hand, I strongly support my kids’ efforts to make money.
OTO, on more than one occasion we have recommended/told our kids to decline things like babysitting gigs when we felt it was dangerous or otherwise not worth the money - like if it was too late on a school night, if the kids to be sat were brats, if the parents had previously returned later than they said, or if they came home drunk and then wanted to drive my kid home. And ISTR a warehouse job offered my son when he was a young teen, where we questioned whether there was too much risk of injury such that it was not worth the money he would earn.
So there is a sort of sliding scale. the couple of hundred $ the kid might earn would have to be weighed against any potential dangers/risks.
In this case, if I were the parent and did not know you or your friends, I could easily imagine telling my kid not to accept the job. Whereas I would have no problem having my kid do the same for me or my BILs. Of course, my decision would be influenced by my kid’s personality, his demonstrated responsibility, does he regularly stay up that late, is is he good driver, etc. It also might depend on circumstances such as what your neighborhood is like, what you look like and how you dress, how well you maintain your house and what type of entertaining you do. That sort of thing.
And if I were leaning towards letting him, I could imagine stopping by with my kid to discuss it with you and express any concerns.
But I sure wouldn’t be upset at you for having asked.
Yes it was. I remember sitting in the car with my baby sister while my mother went grocery shopping. It was okay as long as the window was left open.
Now - if I even think about doing that, I’m afraid some busy-body would call the cops on me.
I thought the same thing. I recall when I was younger that a lot of bars wouldn’t let you sit at the BAR if you were 21, but you could come into the establishment and sit at a table away from the bar. I also recall some places checking IDs at the door and not even letting you in if you were under 21.
Of course, my memories are from 10 years ago in Ohio, so Texas may be different.