>>I’ve heard of 14 year-olds going for joyrides everywhere I’ve ever lived—and that almost covers the country. The fact that they were in a boat is the only major difference.
And that is a huge difference. Joyriding in a car means that you can always stop, get out of the car, make a call, and wait for help to come get you if you get in over your head. Joyriding offshore in a boat is a life and death decision. The parents of these “half-boy half-fish” boys did not instill a proper respect for the sea before allowing them to roam free on the ocean. I’m sure the parents thought of themselves as “best friends” with those boys. Most of these type of situations begin with “best friend” parents.
More teenage boys wrap themselves around telephone poles than die in boats. I’m not even going to look it up. Even after they get their “Nanny State Approved” driver’s license, they die—many of them on on joyrides. Everyone dies—it’s the only thing you can count on in life and teenage boys do so more often than anyone else.
You don’t know these folks, but you are surely willing to condemn them. I pray your children never do anything wrong and, if they do, that others are a bit more compassionate.
Once again, you know nothing about these families, yet you continue to bore us with your psychoanalysis of them as if you’ve known them your whole life.
You do fit right in to Free Republic 2015 though, I’ll give you that.
Your post does not compute with the facts.
At 14, every Saturday morning, My friend and I would get into our Sunfish sailboats about dawn, and head out into the Atlantic Ocean near Cape Fear. We sailed until 10 or 11, with trot lines (fishing lines for the ignorant) trailing behind the boats, and our cockpits filling with King and Spanish Mackerel.Anything else went back into the sea.
We would return to shore and sell our fish to local restaurants we had as regular customers. I was a rich kid!
But, at times, we would be so far offshore in those 13 foot overgrown surfboards with sails, that we could not even see the water towers on Wrightsville Beach (NC).
At 14, I had been sailing for more than 10 years SOLO! At 12, I was teaching some Marines at Guantanamo how to sail, and was the youngest person allowed to sail the Special Services Cape Cods! The rules said 16 or older, but an exception was made when I demonstrated my abilities to the Chief!
It's so easy to sit in front of a computer and pontificate, but sometimes it only exposes ignorance on a subject.
