Friday, September 23, 2005

Slackers and Delinquents

Wil pinged me today, asking where I've been and why I've been such a blog slacker. Boy, I have been a slacker lately, haven't I? I'm still working on the Devil's Challenge report, but writing something you'd care to read has been like pulling teeth for some reason. It's like triathlon season ended and 100 IQ points just slurped out of my ears and onto the pavement.

After Sunday's race, Karyn told me to just take a week, kick back, recharge some mental batteries and do what I felt like doing. I felt like doing nothing; mission accomplished, though I did sign up to lose my marathon virginity at the P.F.Chang's Rock 'n Roll Marathon in Phoenix, AZ on January 15, 2006. I considered riding the Apple Cider Century Ride on Sunday but...nah. I'm going out for blueberry pancakes instead.

There has been drama of the non-triathlon kind around our house, though. At about 10:30 P.M. Wednesday night I arrived home to find the Tri-Wife and Tri-Daughter #4 talking to a Great Suburban Outback police officer while they washed various substances off the house and cars parked in the driveway.

Turns out that, through a sequence of events loosely related to the facts that (a) teenage boys think with their dicks instead of their brains and (b) the parents of said teenage boys are incapable of any rational thought at all, we found our cars covered with what turned out to be, um, human excrement and our house marred with numerous paintball strikes.

The 6 miscreants were quickly identified, tracked down and, after I signed complaints against them, arrested, booked and fingerprinted. They now face a court date and possible suspension from the varsity football team for at least a game (against the school's biggest rival.)

One kid (the driver, apparently) stopped by last night and offered a personal, heartfelt apology. He's an emerging football star, a nice, (usually) well-mannered, good-looking kid who has had dinner at our house several times. He did a dumb thing and, Lord knows, we've all been there. But he owned up to it like a man and has learned an important lesson along the way. I'm cool with that; in fact I offered to go to bat for him with the coach so he gets to play.

But as you might expect, with some of the other 5 kids the "parental rationalization bullshit machine" is out in full force. "How can you harass MY kid like that? We're gonna SUE you!" have been common responses to the police and the school. Never mind that the kids have not only confessed and ratted each other out, THEY WERE CAUGHT ON SURVEILLANCE VIDEOTAPE!!! It's such an ugly sight, that of breathtakingly clueless, moronic parents proving yet again that apples do indeed fall pretty close to the procreative tree.

As I just told the police officer a few minutes ago, I don't mind jamming up those kids. Big deal if it costs them a college football scholarship. No nice guy, no breaks, no slack. As the TV show said, "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time..."

9 comments:

:) said...

Hear, hear...I would have never tried something like that for the fact that my dad would have just buried me in the backyard, after he retrieved me from next week.

Good for you...these kids need to learn a lesson!

Tracy said...

Yikes! No wonder you've been under the radar lately! What insanity!

Way to stand your ground, though!

OK, and I see that the Century is out then...way to stand a girl up! ;) JK

Nancy Toby said...

Whoa! You GO! Teach those miscreants a lesson!! Why don't you give the parents a sample of the stuff they left?

Vertical Man said...

OMG, I had NOT thought of giving the parents a "dose" of their own medicine...as it were. There's certainly plenty of "residue" out in the front yard to use as ammunition...or fertilizer!

Chris said...

Heh. Something tells me those parents wouldn't be so sympathetic to the plight of young teenagers if it had been their cars covered in feces! It's always different when it happens to someone else.

I'm glad that you caught them red... well, brown handed. ;)

Marc said...

I'm with you on this one, VM...excriment and paintball crosses the line from harmless prank to vandalism. Good for you. Hopefully, the kids will learn an important (and often lacking) lesson about cause and effect now, before terminal stupidity sets in.

Nice to read your stuff again. Looking forward to hearing about the blueberry pancakes...er...I mean the race.

Oldman said...

inquiring minds what to know. 1) how did they collect the amunition? 2) how did they propel said excrement? 3) how stupid can these kids be? 4)paintball is a gun isn't it? i would think a crime committed with a gun is fairly serious, like real jail time?

tri-mama said...

I stopped reading when I got to "I registered for Chang's..." Yea!!! I'll be there too, as will Commodore and hopefully more.....

Comm's said...

I was at one point in my sad teenage existance one of those '5' that held no remorse. Though I guarantee that my parents were tough, disciplining, drag me by the ear to apologize people, I did not make a few years for them very pleasant. Nor people I inflicted my stupidity on.

Thank the Lord He saw fit to give me amnesia and build me up again as a good man instead of a slacker and delinquent.