A. Scream "You hate me!" and lock yourself in your room and write bad poetry.Apparently the cool thing to do out in the Seattle 'burbs these days is "D." Maybe it's just the rosy glow imparted by memory, but I seem to recall that back when I was in high school kids weren't so high-strung, (or at least we were more thoroughly cowed by the thought of something like this going on our permanent record.)
B. Cry.
C. Apologize profusely and try for a plea agreement.
D. Grab your compound bow, put a broadhead through dad's brisket, gather up three dozen more arrows and lead the local SWAT team on a chase through the woods like a pint-sized Rambette.
Remember: Bows don't kill people; teen drama queens do.
35yo dad with a 15yo daughter? Maybe he wasn't quite grown up when he sired her, causing much of his current problems.
ReplyDeleteI'm 38, I can't imagine having a 15yo daughter. Having a 7yo and 2yo is bad enough. ;)
Chris
I theorize that stuff with Busey-grade crazy quotient, like this incident, happened without about the same frequency back in the day as it does now. The only difference is that with the 24-hour news cycle and the interwebs, we hear about more of them. Back when we were kids we only heard about the ones that happened in our neighborhood. A small statistical sample.
ReplyDelete1.It's His fault for leaving the compound bow out in the 1st place.
ReplyDelete/sarcasm off
Was it an assault bow?
ReplyDeleteI'm sure there's more to this story than the cell phone.
ReplyDeleteProps to a 15 year old girl that is proficient with a compound bow and willing to arm herself with the same.
Clearly, though, she has emotional issues.
(as is the case with 98.73% of the female gender between the ages of 12 and 35 that I have met)
This part is interesting:
ReplyDelete"After she was apprehended, the girl was found to be despondent with a serious medical issue,"
Brain tumor? Schizophrenia? Something else that would effect her behaviour and/or impulse control? Since she's a minor, we may never find out.
"The only difference is that with the 24-hour news cycle and the interwebs, we hear about more of them."
Mostly the intertubes, I bet. The 24-hr news cycle started well before 'net access was common, and you still only heard about the big stuff unless it was local.
Sounds like she's trying to live up to the old saying, "It don't matter how good looking she is, there's some guy, somewhere, who's already tired of putting up with her s---."
ReplyDeleteYeah, 'cause dudes never just pop off and ice somebody over something dumb...
ReplyDeleteThis is me, rolling my eyes...
I blame Sarah Palin.
ReplyDelete...and the NRA.
ReplyDeleteHey Tam, I'm guilty of using Bruce H's line so here's one for you to use to insult males. When I was grumpy my ex used to say, "What's the matter are your nuts rotating?" Her theory was that it happened monthly. Might explain a whole lot of incidents.
ReplyDeleteThe SWAT Team didn't kill her?
ReplyDeleteI seem to recall that back when I was in high school kids weren't so high-strung
ReplyDeleteIt's a combination of
1) Everybody's special and deserves to be treated as such (hence overinflated self-esteem);
2) We owe it to the kids to make things easy for them, so we don't overtax their widdle growing brains (hence no concept of responsibility);
3) Any "old-fashioned" punishment by parents or teachers can be offered to the cops or CPS as evidence of child abuse (hence no concept of consequences);
4) MTV.
I can't speak for the girl in this particular incident, but from my own observations, the four things cited above account for most of the precious snowflake behavior we see today.
In other words, when these kids grow up, we're boned.
high school kids weren't so high-strung
ReplyDeleteI see what you did there...
Yeah, "Kids these days." Meh. We were all knuckleheads growing up, every last one of us. You can read a slightly more eloquent version of "kids these days" in Ecclesiastes.
ReplyDeleteBut to the point of the story; this is why my daughter has access to her rifle, but the ammunition is kept under lock and key.
gvi
wv: ofties(n) - New line from Depends, for more frequent users
It was an Assault Bow with a high capacity quiver screwed onto the side, a pulley system to make it easier for anyone to use it, and a high tech sighting mechanism that should be limited to the millitary!!! And then there are the extra lethal arrows! Why cant people satisfy themselves with a springy branch and a regular arrow like the Native Americans used?
ReplyDeleteThe Bow industry has been seeking increased lethality to combat the declining sales of bows. It started with the Mongols and their composite bows and has culminated in today's incredibly lethal assault bows!
I blame Ted Nugent!
ReplyDeleteGerry
I mean.. over in the US, you can't beat your kids if they fuck up?
ReplyDeleteWhat can you use? Nasty language is out too?
I mean.. a good whack makes remembering what not to do a whole lot easier.. and I don't begrudge my parents any corporal punishments I've ever recieved..
I almost set fire to our gas main once.. or dropped a CRT screen out of the car boot, or made a flamethrower and almost set some silly gazebo on fire..
Amazingly, no one ever too away my lighter, probably out of fear I have another one and would then set fire to something more substantial..
The only thing this story has in common with Seattle is the newspaper covering it.
ReplyDeleteTahuya's far closer in culture to the rural Midwest than to any city in the country. And anything on the west side of Puget Sound might as well be on the Moon.
Adrian K,
ReplyDeleteNot weird enough for the rural Midwest, which is normally dull as dishwater except when it's very very not. ;)
New headline: "Devotee of Artemis Needs Mentoring."
ReplyDeleteSubhead: "Mistakes Dad for Orion"
Seriously, a friend's daughter is a teenage archery champ, and I would not want her after me with her bow.
Can't someone fit this girl with a skimpy action costume and teach her to be a superhero[ine]?
Anyone else react to the newsreader calling 35 arrows an "arsenal"?
ReplyDelete"...and the NRA."
I was about to make a letter replacement joke there but I don't think the NBA has much to do with bows.
WV: puthyps.
Pushups for lisping pussies?
I don't think that it is fair to always be nocking the bow control movement, they are always getting the shaft, the NBA is always compounding the dangers of private bow ownership by quarreling with law enforcement while open carrying, all the while stringing along commonsense bow control legislation.
ReplyDeleteIt's takes a lot of pluck to stand up to those bow rights fascist, it would make a grown man quiver.......
You have to remember this is rural Mason County. Two hours and fifty years back from Seattle.
ReplyDeleteThomas F,
ReplyDeleteThat volley of puns nearly caused me to take flight.
Teenage girl? Bow?
ReplyDelete... I blame Orlando Bloom.
I'm certain the only reason there was no blood shed at her apprehension and detention is that there were no family pets with her.
ReplyDeleteSo, High Schoolers have changed? Um, the President of my senior year was twenty-two. Got out of jail at the start of the school year from an armed-robbery jail sentence.
ReplyDeleteThis was 1962-1963. And in a suburban community, not exectly inner-city, my memory comes up with only one on-campus fist-fight during those three yaers.
Have to admit, though, he seemed like a nice guy. Probably a lot more to his story, considering the place he robbed was his father`s store.
@Tam.
ReplyDeleteOkay, you have a point. That part of Washington is a probably more like mixing a couple doses of Angsty Punk with a dollop of Redneck Western Michigander.
@Zdogk9
Truly. It's really damn weird out there. But it's also some of the best motorcycle riding outside of Northern California. I just make sure I have my carry piece in the tankbag.
In a (for me, anyway) rare defense of Seattle, Tahuya could hardly be considered "the 'burbs."
ReplyDeleteThe odd thing is, he took away her cell phone, in an area with no signal...
According to her court-appointed lawyer, she was "cleaning it, when without warning it went off".
ReplyDeleteAntibubba
Sounds like someone took "The Hunger Games" as a training manual.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.onlinemovieshut.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/jennifer-lawrence-in-the-hunger-games.jpg
I wouldn't say rural midwest...I have a house for sale in Belfair, about 5 miles from where this happened.
ReplyDeleteI would describe it as more of a meth-lab sub-rain forest feel...a lot of 2-5 acre lots with abandoned single wides.
Glad the Mason County Sheriff's Department SWAT team got some practice.
I'm confused, was that kindness or nurturing?
ReplyDeleteFor Antibubba: I am minded of the old-fashioned easy-going American tales of eighty years ago, as shown in H.T. Webster's cartoons.
ReplyDeleteUmm, Sir? Your Honor? I was cleaning my slingshot and it went off. I will be happy to pay to the glazier what he thinks is due to him, 'specially seeing that my Mom and Dad are standing right behind me in this here courtroom.
If it were in Pima County, the safety would have still been on.
ReplyDeleteAnybody who is willing to shoot her father with a bow because he took her cell phone away is psycho.
ReplyDeleteSociopathic. Pscyhopathic. Fucked up. However you want to put it.
But anybody who is willing to use deadly force on her (or his) own father over a cell phone is nuts, or evil. Or both.
Other Anonymous...the fact that 20 years of age is now seen as "too young" to become a father shows just how screwed up and stupid and immature our society has become over the years.
ReplyDeleteIn 1942, 20 years old was more than old enough to fly B-17s over Nazi Germany, or take on Japanese machine gun nests in the Pacific.
Hell, a 20-year-old then would have been commanding the 17 and 18 year olds in the combat zone.
But today, 20 is "too young" to become a father.
How spoiled and indolent and idiotic we have become over a few decades.
Others have noted Tahuya isn't a Seattle, 'burb, so I'll content myself with suggesting it's more on the outskirts of Twin Peaks.
ReplyDeleteNo kidding, I live just across the Hood Canal from Tahuya. The only incorporated area of Mason County is Shelton, which I swear is the prototype for the series, even though so far as I know David Lynch never got out there. But I can't go to Shelton without the theme running through my head.
Anyway, as one who lives there, yeah, that sounds like Tahuya. Or else, on my side of the Canal, Grapeview.
Steve: The Sasquatches have been breeding too often with the locals.
ReplyDeleteNo kid, your real dad ain't the milkman ...
I was 20 when my daughter was born. I was also on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier when it happened.
ReplyDeleteSo far so good, none of my kids have ever tried to shoot me with a bow and arrow...or anything else, for that matter.
I was 22 when my daughter was born and she was 22 when her daughter was born. Every time I sense any angst about advancing age (daughter is 39 now) I always remind her, "Remember, when Abby is your age, YOU'LL BE MY AGE!" (61) Standing by to be shot - with something - any moment now. Maybe she'll use the Glock 19 I gave her a decade ago. Seriously, what is happening to kids these days. By 20, I had become "qualified" on two different 637 class SSNs (plankowner on the first)and routinely handled "special weapons." You know, the kind that go fission-fusion-fission after the fuse is lit. Responsibility and accountability were not just words. No one was given extra points just to enhance his widdle self-esteem either. Kentucky Jones.
ReplyDelete