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In the Hands of Babes and Sucklings
Newsflash: Teenagers are generally stupid and dangerous.
I know that I did some pretty stupid and dangerous crap when I was a kid.
Either I was lucky or not stupid and dangerous enough, so I managed to make it past my 25th birthday without wrapping my car like a pretzel* around a telephone pole.
Listening to the stories my dad tells of his youth, he was just damned lucky.
Now we must endure the local coverage, the tributes to two saints who died: A. On the cusp of embarking on their new life after graduating high school. B. On the cusp of entering their final year of high school to then jump off from that upcoming cusp into a promising new life.
Such a tragic accident.
Balls.
These "accidents" happen all the time. When I was a bairn, a car stuffed with popular girls was killed at a rival high school. I overheard talk at a party about how it was such a tragic accident. Being the sensitive guy I am, I waded in with "Bullshit. There's nothing accidental about it. The driver was racing another car. She took a turn posted 45 mph in her Ford Escort at 80+. There was construction gravel at the apex of the turn. That driver was stupid and she killed her passengers."
I didn't make any new friends that night, though I reinforced some existing friendships.
In this most recent case, somehow a teenage guy with more testosterone than sense (read: every single teenage guy with descended testicles) got his sweaty palms on a '97 Corvette.
If he bought it himself, saving and scrimping from summer jobs, he could've saved a lot of hassle and his passenger's life if he'd just bought a Mossberg (he was too young to buy a handgun in California) and splattered his meager brains over the Adriana Lima pinups in his bedroom.
If the Corvette was a gift from someone who should've been older and wiser, well, you fucking killed those two kids as surely as if you'd gifted them a hand grenade ("Whatever you do, don't pull the pin. Be careful. OK?")
* I found this image while looking up images of crullers and pretzels, and I just had to share. It's slightly NSFW, but it had me thinking thoughts of self-inflicted wire-coat-hanger-through-the-tear-ducts lobotomy. Enjoy.