News of the Weird: Holy Fuckballs! Responsible Parents!
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Intrepid reader David (from The Official Scorers sports commentary blog), kindly sent this link to a heartening story of parental responsibility:
Ryan Schallenberger, 18, was arrested Saturday after his parents called police when 10 pounds of ammonium nitrate, an oxidizing agent in explosives, was delivered to their home in Chesterfield, near the North Carolina border …
That's right, in direct contrast to the "where were the fucking parents" situation in Florida recently, these folks were exactly where they should have been: At home, wondering why in the fuck their teenage kid was ordering large quantities of ammonium nitrate.
When the shit was about to hit the fan, the parents did what they were supposed to do. They shut off the fan, and grabbed a shovel. In this case, by turning their fucked-up kid in to the cops. Not only did they catch him before he hurt anyone, but they even paid enough attention to notice the kid was having some "issues" beforehand. They tried to get Ryan into a mental health clinic for an evaluation, after he smashed his head into the wall a few days before his arrest. Wild, huh? It's like they were actually paying attention to their child's behavior! (Nevermind the fact that the clinic "offered no help" when they called … the sorry state of our mental health system is a rant for another day.)
Granted, the kid had been keeping his fucked-up strategic journal for over a year, and it sure seems like some earlier signs of anti-social tendencies might have manifested themselves sooner … but who's to say? I was an anti-social little freak in high school, and I certainly never made any plans to kill, maim, shoot or bomb anyone or anything. Hell, sullen anti-social behavior is about as rare among teenagers as high blood pressure is among corporate executives … and nobody has been interviewed thus far who has anything bad to say about Ryan's behavior in school.
But really, the key points I see here are: Ryan's parents didn't stick their heads in the sand, and say, "Oh, maybe it's for a science class project, our straight-A angel student would never do anything BAD." I didn't see any quotes from them wondering why their little darling was in trouble. They didn't say he was a, "well-adjusted, level-headed, stable, loving boy," after finding his journal, full of detailed plans for planting explosives all over the school, blowing everything the fuck up, killing himself, and leaving a pre-recorded audiotape behind to explain everything. Nope, they sucked it up, realized their kid was seriously screwed up and dangerous, and called the police to turn him in.
The parents of those six vicious little cunts in Florida, and their fuckwit male henchmen, could stand to learn something from this family.
A.
Fucking.
Men.
21st April 2008 at 11:08 pm | permalink |Not to say I don't agree with you, because I do. But being a mother I must wonder, would I have done it? Would I turn my children in? It is one thing to stick your head in the sand, but this requires a leve-headedness I'm sure few parents, however aware their children are "no angels" (major understatement), would have.
22nd April 2008 at 3:52 am | permalink |"level-headedness", that is. If the word exists at all :)
22nd April 2008 at 3:52 am | permalink |Score one for smart parents. Score for dipshit parents is still somewhere around infinity.
22nd April 2008 at 9:04 am | permalink |@anonymous: And Halle-fucking-luja!
@h_nuss: Not being a parent, I'm not sure if I could call in my own kid either. I like to think I would, if I found a notebook like his though.
And I've been using "level-headedness" for years, so if it's not a work, it damn well should be. ;-)
@movie whore: Well yes, I think the dipshits generally do outweigh smart folk though. C'mon. You're ruining my little moment of sunshine here!
22nd April 2008 at 10:40 am | permalink |Great, this gave me a little hope for our fucked up society. Some things aren't that bad afterall! Musta took a lot for the parents to do that though. I'm proud of them.
22nd April 2008 at 12:40 pm | permalink |Yeah, I agree with your premise, this is good news, BUT,,,I still can't stop laughing at the fact that YOU said "Holy Fuckballs" (Also, I can't believe that YOU were an anti-social little cunt freak in high school)
22nd April 2008 at 2:41 pm | permalink |@aimee: I totally admire them for doing it too.
@pedro: I got "holy fuckballs" from a friend … I might even use it as "Profanity of the Month" one of these days. As for not believing I was antisocial, hehe, I have a funny feeling you're pulling my leg. ;-)
22nd April 2008 at 2:41 pm | permalink |@alphabitch: Sorry but sometimes I can't shut the fuck up and go too far.
Seriouslythese parents did a good thing and have shown they actually pay attention to their kid and knew what to do when faced with an alarming red flag of having material to build bombs show up. I am sure these are the same kind of parents that regardless the outcome are going to standby and help their kid any way they can.
Yes it great of you to bring us some good news.
22nd April 2008 at 3:46 pm | permalink |@movie whore: hehe … np, I was mostly joking. ;-)
22nd April 2008 at 4:39 pm | permalink |Loving this discussion. Used to be a teacher. You'd be amazed how many people believe THEIR children are special.
If you haven't seen it yet, rent Idiocracy. Great movie that's so dead on it is scary.
22nd April 2008 at 6:49 pm | permalink |@misterelie: The funny thing is, a lot of those parents might be right, thanks to them raising their kids like little princes and princesses …
… but that likely means their children aren't special in a *good* way. ;-)
22nd April 2008 at 7:03 pm | permalink |Maybe now the kid will get the help he needs. It seems the prison systems always have the best health care for some twisted reason.
@alphabitch's last comment. Once upon a time my father tried to start calling me a princess and I told him to stop because I wasn't a princess and there was no need to call my anything other than my name. He was baffled. My mother still thinks it's hysterical that at 6 years old I could say something like that. On the other hand I have a 21 year old friend whose parents still call her princess.
23rd April 2008 at 6:06 am | permalink |@hellationships: re: prison system … maybe because their hospitals are well funded, and actually *not* in it just for the money? heh
re: princess … that's freaking fantastic! lol
23rd April 2008 at 12:43 pm | permalink |But why is this happening in us all the time? Why are so many kids so fuckin' frustrated that they have to kill their classmates and teachers? Maybe it's time to take a closer look at society, beyond the parents and kids? There might be a clue in the way society worships the A students, the talented musicians, painters, scientists or whatever society is putting up there for the little bastards to reach for? Maybe the sky is too high?
23rd April 2008 at 5:18 pm | permalink |Maybe the little fucks should master basic social skills before thrown to the wolfs? That's up to the system, don't you think?
23rd April 2008 at 5:23 pm | permalink |@bill: From what I've noticed about US society & public schools, not only is the academic bar set too low, it isn't the A students being worshiped, it's the popular, socially successful students who usually are … that's one of the things his journal was bitching about: All the popular kids who didn't "deserve" what they had.
I'd personally like to hear more about his family. I mean, yes his parents definitely did the right thing at the end, but what about the 18 years leading up to this?
And as for learning social skills, how can that be up to the system? Schools in this country can (on average) barely keep up an acceptable level of academic achievement, much less spending time and resources on social skills.
I think most kids learn social skills from being thrown to the wolves, for better or worse.
23rd April 2008 at 5:46 pm | permalink |yeah they do social, but academic is somewhat different. when i'm talkink about society i'm talking about the world and what kind of world do we want to have? if we continiously press our kids to be what we want them to be because "that's how you should be". No i think we have thrown away any ambission amoungs the students because of this hunting after big achivements, and the sier pressure is getting to them..?
23rd April 2008 at 6:15 pm | permalink |have to add some shit.
24th April 2008 at 11:53 am | permalink |There might be a little percent like 5% of the students that's ever going to be something big in society, whatever it be. but the fuckin rest is having a personality crisis because they never have the "thing" to be SOMEBODY. what the hell do you do with them? The scrap, the waste, the one's whithout a cause? Do you send them to special school?
@bill: OK, taken in a larger context I see what you mean. Everybody wants to be 'somebody' when they're young. But I don't think that's a strictly recent phenomenon. There's always been a tiny number of people who attained fame, or greatness, or what have you … and everyone else has always had to suck it up and find meaning in a comparatively 'normal' life.
Do kids these days have less developed coping skills? That could be … maybe too many parents are too sucked in by the "everybody is special" school of parenting, and the kids think it's JUST NOT FAIR. Or maybe pop culture as a whole is too strong an influence for a lot of parents to counteract? Or, more likely, a combination of too many influences to point a finger in one definite direction?
24th April 2008 at 2:36 pm | permalink |no, no you do not see my point. There is a reason why there's been nothing but war since the first motherfuckinghuman saw daylight. It’s been tribal wars, it's been war amongst countries. It’s been man against man, in every fuckin society on earth for thousands and thousands, maybe millions of years and it never seems to stop. something most be very wrong? If we keep on going it’s going to be very fuckin bad..
24th April 2008 at 3:38 pm | permalink |@bill: Hm. Well that didn't sound like what you were saying at first … but at any rate, I really don't think the apparent human impulse toward conflict is going to go away any time soon.
And if it's something that's been going on since the beginning of humanity, does that mean "something is wrong," or does it mean "that's the way things are"? Could we find a better way to deal with it? Almost certainly. But make it go away? I really doubt it.
24th April 2008 at 3:45 pm | permalink |but is not human the cause of it? did we start it? can we stop it?
24th April 2008 at 4:12 pm | permalink |it all sounds very juvinile..
ok, "that's the way we are". we have to beat the shit out of … mankind cannot be changed because that's the way we are. All the fuckin' brainpower availabele to mankind is just not enough. we can send a fucker to the moon but to change ourselves, oh,,no, that's not possible..??
25th April 2008 at 2:51 pm | permalink |@bill: Like I said, I'm sure we could find a way to mitigate it, or deal with it better than we do … but eliminating aggression from humanity? I don't see that happening.
25th April 2008 at 4:13 pm | permalink |ok abitch. if we started in school,with the little ones. maybe then we could make a wee little better world? if we're intrested. or what?
25th April 2008 at 5:18 pm | permalink |I knew there would be some people with the "I couldn't turn in my own kid" shtick, but let me break it down for you. You get your 18-year-old adult child arrested and the court will mandate mental health care. You don't, and the kid will blow somebody up. It's sad, but in order to actually GET decent care for an adult child (or really, most kids), you need a court order for it. A) they have no control of him since he's legally adult B) this country has better health care for crackheads than they do for the mentally ill. Go figure.
27th April 2008 at 3:58 am | permalink |@ alphabitch: Eliminate aggression from humanity? Not possible.
Aggression is is the expression of ascendant power that is an inherent part of the human condition, and takes a multitude of forms: violence (crime), violence (combat), competition (physical or intellectual), achievement (physical or intellectual), etc.
Aggression is seen in how we strive against mundanity, mediocrity, sameness, or the status quo. Every advancement in human history is the result of an expression of aggression—sometimes great, sometimes small expressions, and always tempered by the opposing force. It is, ultimately, an inherent concept in Nietzsche's idea of "Der Wille zur Macht" (The Will to Power), and has been repeatedly misunderstood and misrepresented through oversimplification and a general inability to objectively understand the idea, independent of the loaded meaning so often assigned to the terminology and concepts.
27th April 2008 at 9:29 am | permalink |wow! WTG parents! My bf was like why'd they have to call the police on him. They couldn't just sit him down and ask him what he was planning on doing with it? I was like fuck that shit if Toby (our son) did that I'd call the cops. Who knows if he would have tried to kill his parents or anyone else who tried to get in his way. Ya know? That's what you call good parents right there. Glad they caught the little bastard in the act before anyone else got hurt.
28th April 2008 at 4:22 pm | permalink |Good for those parents. I called the cops when my teenage son and I argued and he made the bad decision to push me (I'm 5'1"). I asked to the police to take him over to his dad's to cool off. He started getting teary-eyed and after they left, I did too, but believe me I NEVER had to worry about him growing up to be abusive or something!
19th May 2008 at 6:00 pm | permalink |