I guess H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King would be serving long prison terms or would have been confined to mental institutions if they were teenagers today! Imagine the reaction of teachers/school officials to their stories!
Word. Kid Kalhoun was going to join the Marines and not only did they supply the stuff that masks pot in your urine, but they were indeed going to give him a waiver. He actually need two waivers, but they wouldn’t do two at that time. WooHOO! He didn’t go!
Until we hear that this kid has a reputation for writing creepy slasher horror and perhaps making creepy threatening comments at random as well, the only thing we can conclude from this is that the teacher either needs help or to get her ass kicked. No student could reasonably expect that writing a piece of random fiction where a fictional assignment was requested would get him arrested. Unless there is further suspicious history there that we haven’t heard about, the arrest was an entirely irrational reaction and no sensible human being could predict it.
I’ve written first-person fiction wherin the main character (referred to as “I”, so it must have been me) interacted with individuals with fantastic and magical powers. Is the rational response to interrogate me about there whereabouts of such persons?
This kids deserves an A+. Seriously. You only have to look at the reactions to see how convincing he was. Stephen King would pay a million bucks to get arrested by a yokel cop for writing too scary, the publicity would be worth it.
We went over this way upthread. It’s not strictly Asian in the US either, but in my experience, it is predominantly an Asian name. And as it turns out, he IS Asian.
Deadly Accurate, mind PM’ing your name? Your books sound like they may be the kind of stuff I enjoy.
I find American Pie terribly disturbing. If I tell so to the american police, will they arrest everybody involved?
If it was capable of evoking such fear and dangerous imagery wouldn’t that make it an example of at least fairly effective writing/storytelling despite the violent content.
A total hijack aside but visavis the comments of “He’s a straight A student!” …
My mother-in-law called the other week. Seems a kid jumped off the roof of the local High School where my wife had gone, back in the day. “But he was a straight A student, accepted to a good school and everything!”
Good students can be stressed tudents, can be disturbed students, can be mentally ill students, can be suicidal students.
The moment the teacher or administrator thought “Well he’s probably just being provocative and a smart-ass with poor taste … but am I sure?” (“99% sure it is chalk dust.”) was the moment that their minds went to the possibility of being wrong, however small, and not being sure enough.
Handled poorly, no doubt. But as someone who has been asked to decide if a kid really is of suicidal or violent intent or just mouthing off, I can tell you the fear of being wrong in your asessment looms large. Even when if you are “99%” sure. Yeah, the right thing would have been for the school administrator to have called kid and family in and if reassured by that interview maybe even still insist on a psych eval and clearance as well for the CYA aspect. Maybe even out of school until such was accomplished.
But to be glibly sure that he’s really no risk because he gets good grades? Unwarranted.
