These are meant to be jokes, and yet…
Scenario: Jack pulls into school parking lot with rifle in gun rack of his truck.
1973: Vice Principal comes over, takes a look at Jack’s rifle, goes to his truck and gets his to show Jack.
2007: School goes into lockdown, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers.
Scenario: Johnny and Mark get into a fist fight after school.
1973: Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up best friends.
2007: Police called, SWAT team arrives, arrests Johnny and Mark. Charge them with assault, both expelled even though Johnny started it.
Scenario: Jeffrey won’t be still in class, disrupts other students.
1973: Jeffrey sent to office and given a good paddling by Principal. Sits still in class.
2007: Jeffrey given huge doses of Ritalin. Becomes a zombie. School gets extra money from state because Jeffrey has a disability.
People might see this as a joke, but it was mostly true. Especially the part about the guns. In the rural high school I went to it was quite common for both students and teachers to bring in their firearms to show off. I had a friend with a semi-automatic that brought it to school a lot. He thought it was cool. No one thought of it as a concern.
As somebody that was in high school in 73, and as a parent that now has kids in high school, I’d have to say that it’s pretty much spot on.
Same thing with fireworks, the real class B stuff not the watered down cheap south of the boarder stuff, remember the unicorn brand and real m80s, cherry bombs and quarter sticks?
Now if you’re caught with anything like that, your considered a terrorist and will be locked up for a long time.. Hell I kept bottle rockets in my school locker all the time, hell teachers would always ask if I had any extra.
ah the good old days……
Guy I knew in high school whose hobby was explosives. He had vials of nitro and other things in an old freezer in his basement. He’d blow up garbage cans in a field, etc. If the cops caught a kid doing that today? Gitmo.
Ah yes, the good old days of being afraid to go to school because of psychopathic bullies. I grew up then. The two kids who fought usually didn’t end up being friends. People did get hurt by idiots with fireworks or shot with bb’s. But yes, it’s sick what they’re doing to boys with ritalin now.
#3 & 4,
Very true. If you recall though, every year there were public announcements about the danger of fireworks and every year we read about someone who lost some fingers, a hand, their eyesight, or worse. So while yes, fire works were treated much more cavalierly, it wasn’t without reason they are so restricted today. In my opinion, that has more to do with fireworks then the terrorist shit does, but they would probably use that if they felt the need.
Damn they were fun though. Some of the crap we did as kids, it is a wonder that I’m in one piece today.
3. I had a friend make his own flamethrower back in the day. The good news: it worked. The bad news: It burned three quarter of his body with 3rd degree burns.
Stupid people will always do stupid things, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t at least try and protect them.
Jokes are supposed to be funny
So true SO SO TRUE
what has our world come to.
Yes times have changed. In Jr, High school I would spend my time in shop class re-loading shotgun shells for my teacher. After school I had an archery class where we made our own bows and arrows! On Fridays I’d bring my guns with me and keep them in my locker so my friends and I could go rabbit hunting after school. This was not in a rural area, hell it was Salt Lake City. Today a student doing the same things would be spending time in jail or on drugs…or both.
We are creating an atmosphere in todays schools that tells the kids that they live in a world without danger. They are not responsible for their own actions and that they are entitled to happiness and success without any effort on their part.
We teach them that if they do not succeed (Don’t even think of using the “F”-word FAIL) that it must be someone else’s fault. So we are saddled with a generation of whining brats who want it all and want it now and they will blame anyone or sue anyone if things are not to their liking or they get a little bruised along the way.
End of rant (Sorry)
Where I went to school we would check in our guns and knives in the office and then pick them up when we went home after school. You needed them for your own protection. The toughest gangs in the city were the Irish Catholic gangs. I was attacked twice because they thought I squealed on them to the cops when they murdered some guy and I saw it. I was so young I didn’t know what really happened until my neighbor who was a cop told me and asked me if I knew who did it..
I didn’t…
So I wonder what the kids do now for protection.
My uncle is a consultant for SEP, the French equivalent of NASA, and designed the propellant for the 3rd stage of the Ariane. This stuff is like rubber, has its own oxidizer and is full of powdered aluminum. It’ll burn a hole in concrete under water. I used to take precursors to high school and have lots of fun with it. Physics teachers loved it. Today, I’d be a terrorist spending time at Gitmo. [Heavy sigh]
I was at the Christmas party at my old company last year and there’s a fireworks nut that still works there. We set off a quarter stick in the back parking lot (which was empty) that is adjacent to a huge empty field. Within 15 minutes there was a Sheriff”s helicopter circling around and four or five cruisers in the area. Man!
“…meant to be a jokes” Where are the jokes?
Spot on…. (I remember being on the school bus, at about six years old, and noting a couple of kids with hunting rifles…. Not to mention the “rifle team” .22′s….)
A now deceased Uncle worked for the Air Force during WWII. He brought home parachute flares to test over a long weekend. (His family owned a junk yard.) He let off a flare and started hearing sirens.
The PD and FD were not amused, nor was his CO at the Air Force, but there were no records kept. Today?
Ritalin is everywhere, too. Too easy….
Mostly, we’re afraid to do anything but evaluate and warehouse the kids. Not defend them, or protect them….
Different world….
Regards,
How the hell did this turn into a fireworks discussion?
At the age of 10 my grand faterh explains to me HOW to play with fire works, at 11 I get to use them myself.
At 14, Im taken out and shown how to use a rifle.
At 15, Im taken in the Blue mtns, and shown how to hunt, in -20 degree weather, Froze my $#@%$#@4 off…
at 16 I took my Driver ed, and gun saftty courses…
(this is deliberate)
At 8, I took my sled down a hill that was a Good 400 foot hill, And ran HEAD ON into a phone pole, and was out for 3 days…
Let us be idiots, let us kill ourselves, LEt us LEARN the hard way…
DONT stick your finger into an electrical socket, DONT stick ANYTHING into that socket.
I dont need MOTHER, governmant to control myself, from being STUPID…
The good old days….what is this the nostalgia blog!! The old times were better because we didn’t know what we know now!!
For those who don’t see the humor in the post, you’ve got your irony feature turned off. Please turn on and reboot.
Yeah, these days are much different. In my youth, the progression of Christmas presents for boys was: BB gun for ten-year old, .22 at age twelve, shotgun at 14, and high-powered rifle at 16.
I remember turning my 10-year old loose to hunt birds with his BB gun. He and his friend only had to walk a half-mile to get to the sagebrush-covered hills. They came back after a few minutes saying that some man threatened to call the cops if they didn’t return home.