So this guy in New York gets drunk, gets annoyed at his wife for not having sex with him, and he sets his building on fire.
Said numskull ends up dying in the flames (whoops!), but that’s not what’s really bizarre.
No, what’s strange is that two other people living in the building died, one of whom was a mother.
Of 15 children.
There are several places where I’d expect I might find a mother of 15 children, but I never expected that anyone born and bred in NYC would have 15 kids!
I must say, I’m surprised how many times I’ve seen on these boards statements like these, that there’s something wrong with a family that has more than an “acceptable” number of children. (Not sure what that is, but I’m sure my family violates that rule.) It was nice growing up one of many – plenty of people to play with, even when you were mad at some of them. And if your implication is that only ignorant folks from the sticks have many kids, my parents met in college, both have bachelors, my mom has a masters, between them they speak seven languages, they’ve traveled the world, and all their kids are out of the nest and college grads. And while I believed growing up that we were “living in the sticks,” truthfully, we always lived in suburbs of relatively large cities (New York, London, LA).
In college, I met many people who came from “large” families; some lived in big cities (Chicago and DC that I remember); some came from smaller towns (Phoenix and Austin that I remember); so I’m not really sure why you think people in New York couldn’t also have big families.
Perhaps this is a whoosh. If so, sorry.
Almost certainly a whoosh.
Simply put, the exorbitant cost of living and the serious constraints on living space make it difficult even for middle class professionals to have one or two children, let alone fifteen. As a New Yorker, my mind simply boggles.
It doesn’t say whether the wife was impressed enough that she’d have had sex with him after the stunt (if he had survived it, of course) - I’m definitely not going to set my house on fire until I know whether or not it will make people sex with me.
The OP made no statement at all about whether or not 15 children was an “acceptable” number.
He simply made and observation that he did not expect such a large family in New York. Like Maeglin, i saw it as a comment on the city’s population density and exhorbitantly priced housing.
That was my first take, too. But the article linked does not say all 15 kids lived there, either.
Darwin in action!
This wasn’t Milton from Office Space, was it?
What do you mean, Darwin in action?
He wasn’t reproducing anyway.
That’s why he lit the house on fire, remember?
But now he won’t ever pass on the stupid genes. See? Darwin’s always looking out for us.
Even if they didn’t, it’s still pretty likely that a good half dozen or so lived there at any given time. That’s still a fearsome brood, a least by NYC standards.
The woman was in her fifties, so i’m guessing that at least some of them are old enough to have moved out of the house by now.
According to the New York Times story (probably requires registration), there were at least four children in the house at the time, but they all escaped. The Times also reports that there were 13 people in the house altogether when it caught fire, and that fourteen firefighters were injured in the blaze, two of them seriously.
All in all a pretty sad event.
Interestingly, the Times makes no mention of the whole issue of King’s wife refusing to have sex with him. King apparently was well-known in the neighborhood for having disagreements with his wife and his step-daughter, and police had responded to the address last year on a domestic disturbance call. Leave it to the Daily News to pick the most sensationalist and least relevant aspect of the story and elevate it to primary importance.