Except it quite likely had personal information on it, and he’s charging her for his own act of vandalism. More like reading then burning her diary or a collection of letters. And then charging her for them.
He’s trying to have it both ways there; if it’s “his computer” so he can break if if he likes, then she owes him nothing for the damage he did. But if its her computer so she has to pay to replace it, then he has no right to destroy it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he does. He’s a gun wielding control freak who likes to enforce his control by breaking things. I wouldn’t be too surprised if he ends up one of those “family annihilators”.
Full disclosure: Now that I have a kid myself, I realize that kids vastly underestimate the amount of time and work parents put in. I certainly had no idea how much my parents did for me, when I was fifteen. I usually side with the parents on matters like these.
(That being said, shooting a laptop? Really? I do like his followup comments, though.)
And I’m always amazed by the number of people who are so emotionally arrested that they reflexively denounce any assertion of parental authority as “abuse”.
I seriously doubt that he’d have reacted similarly to overhearing her bitching to a friend on the phone. A reasonable consequence of publicly bashing your parents using the laptop that your parents paid for is to lose that laptop, and to suffer reinforcement of the idea that it sucks when people say crappy things about you on facebook.
Who is more foolish, the fool, or the fool who follows him? - Obi Wan Kenobi
We may be taking this as a cautionary tale and reinforcing of respectful dispute resolution in my household. I’ll talk to the wife and kids about it when I get home. We may also go out to the shooting range as a family because that just sounds like a fun thing to do this weekend.
If that’s meant as a defense of his triggerhappiness it doesn’t work. A better analogy would be “My daughter didn’t do her chores, so I think I’ll go in her room and shoot something.”
Yes, especially if its a pretty innocent and trivial thing he got mad at. Plus all the other stuff he said. He’s a dangerous lunatic with a temper problem
Excuse me? She has to wake up and get to school on time. She has to make her own bed [and once a month the guest bed] When she gets home he lists - if the floors are dirty, to sweep them up. If the counters are dirty to wipe them down. If the dishwasher is run, empty it and put the dishes away, or if not, make sure all the dishes are in the dishwasher. Do her own laundry. Do her homework.
If she had to move fertilizer, I bet her brother/s did too - and I would be willing that Mom and Dad moved their share as well. I bet what she doesn’t mention that Dad probably rented/owns a rototiller and tilled all the fertilizer into the garden, after breaking the sod to make the garden in the first place. I also bet that the fetching coffee was because she was headed into the kitchen for something anyway, and they asked her to bring them back some coffee. She should look at how much work Mom and Dad do to provide her a comfortable home.
I can remember working in the garden when I was 7, 8, 9 years old pulling weeds, using a hoe to loosen the dirt, and picking veggies. I can remember raking leaves, and washing the car with my brother. I went to work when I was 15 in a machine shop and earning the money to buy everything I needed. I even worked through high school, and college. I bought my second bicycle [the first one I got when I was 8 for christmas] and I bought my first car[ I spent $300 for a Nash Metropolitan. Woohoo.:rolleyes:] We did not have cell phones, laptops, ipods or any of that though I did buy my own stereo and television [it was a 9 inch diagonal black and white, it was decorated with the parchement looking paint job of the US Constitution, it was 1976]
Well there’s losing a laptop, and then there’s losing a laptop, isn’t there? I think back to what my dad might have done in that situation. He probably would have locked it in the attic, or taken away the power cable. Something like that.
He would not have taken it into a field, set up a camcorder, delivered a seven minute long harangue to camera, taken out a gun, lovingly described the ammunition, shot the shit out of it, and posted the video on YouTube or Facebook, for those are the actions of a complete fucking lunatic.
And if he thinks he’s stopped his daughter complaining about him to her friends, after humiliating them both in front of the whole world, then he’s even stupider than he looks, which, with that faggy little cowboy hat of his, would be no mean achievement. All he’s done is ensure that in future she doesn’t leave a paper trail. She’s no doubt complaining more vociferously than ever, spurred on by the fact that she’ll almost certainly be the butt of all her friend’s jokes for at least the next couple of years.
As for the fact that he paid for her laptop? Well, he obviously doesn’t care about the expense, because he destroyed it. In fact, if he works in IT, there’s a good chance he picked it up for free anyway.
All he’s done is teach her to be deferential when he’s around. That’s not the same thing as teaching her to be respectful.
Hey, I already said that I’d have given the laptop away rather than destroying it. That said, I don’t reflexively screech “DANGEROUS CRAZY PERSON!!!” about anyone who owns a gun.
And it’s certainly not relevant whether he “cares about the expense”, it’s about the fact that he provided it to her with good will, and she used it with bad will, so she loses it.
Apologies. I didn’t mean to imply that you’d have destroyed it. I also didn’t mean to imply that I think he’s a nutcase simply for owning a gun. I don’t even really think he’s crazy. I think he’s just a bully. And I believe the extent of his overreaction is clear proof of that.
He’s not “anyone who owns a gun”; he’s someone who shoots things in a temper tantrum. It would be just as bad a sign if he’d used an axe or baseball bat.
