The whole point was to confess the worst things that you have ever done in that category and then paint it in the worst legal terms possible. That is what people were doing with this so I just filled in some other egregious offenses that many minors (and even adults) do and depict it in some of the worst legal jargon possible.
You simply didn’t get it as others did not. I invited people to make their own rap sheet. I am not a felon and I have never been been arrested or charged with anything at all. I simply was once a teenage boy that went through some odd trials and tribulations (insert cite from the Wonder Years about here) on my way to adulthood.
The whole list was completely true but a joke because it was completely stylized. You need to learn the difference because mass media works the same way. Learn some critical thinking skills.
I don’t think he regrets it at all. He says he does, but he keeps the story on hand to tell whenever appropriate. This isn’t once, or twice. It’s his “story to tell” when the topic of pranks comes up. How about the IMHO thread where people were asked to list their biggest regrets? I don’t remember him contributing his story to THAT thread. So… regrets? No. Good prank stories? Yes.
And I still disagree that “normal” 17 year old boys manufacture their own explosives. Have a cinematic interest in watching things blow up? Of course! But making bombs and blowing things up? I don’t think so. I had a brother, he was never into that. None of my brothers friends were into that. None of my friends at the time were into that. To classify shit like “blowing up construction sites” as “normal teenage behavior” is seriously myopic.
Yeah, well, the difference between you and other people is that we’re not interested in bragging about borderline-criminal activities that we may have engaged in during our Wonder Years. You want to know how real regret works? Real regret is not telling the story to a crowd of buddies in a barroom or on the internet. Real regret makes you completely ashamed of how you acted, and gives a chill to your conscience when you lie in bed alone at night. I doubt you’ve ever lost a bit of sleep over this incident.
Not good prank stories, stories of pranks that went wrong. I don’t think he’d say he regrets it if he didn’t, he’d probably say something like “I don’t have a problem with sexual assault and neither do any of you, because if you really cared you’d all be cops or prosecutors”.
Not everyone deals with regret the same way. How do you know it’s more healthy to keep it buried rather than openly acknowledging it? For all I know confessing it helps him deal with it, even though I don’t think that’s the case.
I can’t speak for how he really feels, but IMO he hasn’t said anything that you can point in one direction that can’t be interpreted just as well another way.
I agree with you there. I also find the “everybody does it” defense unconvincing.
That’s a bit ambiguous, isn’t it? He says that he did not have intercourse “as luck would have it,” in other words, circumstances arose that kept him from it.
*she was on her period that night **so there was no actual sex ***contradicts I would not have done that anyway.
Did they not have sex because she was on her period, or because it was never his intention?
He also claims he didn’t want to do ANY of it, but he did. I have no doubt he’d have had sex with her if she wasn’t on her period. Anyone that would save a story like this to cut and paste it for future use is pretty creepy.
National standards of decency? How about just HUMAN standards of decency? What kind of animals raised you? Oh wait, you were raised by a Teacher of the Year. Your "highly sought after professional speaker on 5 continents " mother didn’t teach you basic human decency? Color me confused, but that seems really odd to me.
You’d think, right? The mind boggles. Not even in the top 100? What a waste of a sperm and an egg.
It’s not ambiguous. The statement does not indicate that luck alone prevented intercourse.
Parse:
((I didn’t want to get too deep into this whole thing) and (as luck would have it, she was on her period that night)) so there was no actual sex
The coincidental phrase “as luck would have it” is clearly associated with the statement that “she was on her period that night.”
Summarily: the condition of “luck”, in conjunction with “I didn’t want to get too deep into this whole thing”, prevented intercourse.
Selectively quoting obscures the true meaning. The two conditions together prevented intercourse. Whether one independently would have is unknowable - and to posit that either was, or could have been, the sole factor in preventing intercourse is inconsistent with the full quotation. What we do know is that the outcome desired by Shagnasty was the one that actually occurred: no sex.
Seeing that I am a woman, and I made a short list of stupid things that I did, doesn’t that imply that young stupidity is an equal opportunity endeavor?
NightRabbit, like many things, you are very wrong about this. How many formerly teenage boys do we have to bring in here and admit they loved fire and explosives before people stop thinking this is sociopathic behavior?
It’s very possible your brother wasn’t into this stuff. It’s also very possible you have no idea what he was actually doing at his friend’s houses. I don’t think anyone knows that a friend and I used to burn stuff in his backyard just for kicks, but we did. And it was fun.
EDIT:
Of course it is. But I think what he’s saying is that a lot of threads around here would end very different if the genders were reversed. For example, just look for any of Foxy40’s posts about her husband. The exact same post, written by a man about a woman would cause a huge bruhaha.
I didn’t quote selectively. He deliberately put himself into a situation where intercourse was a likely outcome, and by his own words, it was prevented by the happy accident her being on her period. It follows this form : If X, not Y. X, therefore not Y. The contingency was her menstrual cycle, not his will.
I am a former teenage boy. Neither I, nor anyone I knew, lit fires or blew things up. And I enjoy fire. Just in a controlled setting.
That’s kinda moving the goalposts though, isn’t it? You still enjoyed fire, and all I’m arguing is that “enjoying fire/explosions” is a near universal teenage boy trait.
The fact that some take it too far can be found in any activity.
Hell, I was a teenaged girl and I liked fire. Most boys I knew liked firecrackers, bottle rockets, M-80s, cherry bombs and the like. They liked greasy, messy engines, too–the louder the better. And guns–the bigger the better. Not all teenage males are like that, but I’d say the majority are. Some of them never grow out of it. This “unevolved” subset of men is considered completely normal in today’s society.
Re the ashamed bit–obviously nothing but a direct statement, hopefully on his knees with sackcloth and ashes, would satisfy some of you. I think it’s implied throughout his posts in this thread. He mentions his daughters and how awful it would be to have something like that happen to them. When he was 17, he lacked that insight (as do most teens). He has mentioned several times that he regrets his actions, that he sees this as wrong etc. I infer shame from that (not end my life shame–more like twinges. And why should his feelings be as strong about this as some here? He’s known about this, lived with it for 17 years. It may be news to you all, but to him it’s a bad memory).
And I think Gala meant that the discussion about drink choices is entirely incongruous with anything Miss Manners ever writes about, and it seems unfair to blame her (as often occurs).
And you are missing what I said. I never said you have been arrested or charged with anything. I said you committed a serious felony. You committed conspiracy to commit rape. You weren’t charged or convicted for it, but on what you said, you did it. Given that, reading with “critical thinking skills” might it not be possible to look at what you wrote and think you might be underestimating the criminality of other past actions?
And notice, I never said you were an arsonist. I said it is hardly surprising other people read what you wrote and said “arson.”
