This make me wonder sometimes.
I was no angel like many of us in our late teens, early 20s.
But I guess i went a step further and broke into some vending machines for the cash and the bill validator (worth 200 hot). IT was a disgusting thing to do and if it wasn’t 25 years later with NO way to find the original owner, or even remember the gas station it was, I would pay it all back.
What if i got shot doing that? Would I have been called a great kid. I guess I wasn’t and thems would have been the breaks.
Drill could EASILY be mistaken for a gun.
And mom and friends would be saying this exact thing. They would have been wrong at the time.
Great kids dont steal.
Give yourself a little bit of a break on this one. Breaking into a vending machine is NOT the same as armed breaking and entering someone’s abode.
But yes, it would be a dangerous thing to do, and a drill could be mistaken for a gun, and all of that. But this story is not about someone breaking into a vending machine with a drill.
I was a juvenile delinquent as well and I do feel guilty for some of the things I did when I was young. I never used a weapon in any of my dumb endeavors and I never broke into houses or burgled cars. I went in the Marines at the age of 19 and have been pretty good ever since.
My older brother broke into a place where was working, after hours, to steal beer and I don’t know what, and was caught. He was probably seventeen at the time (I was a toddler) but I remember watching him and our mom in a deep discussion at the kitchen table. Next time I saw him he was in a Navy uniform fresh out of boot camp, soon headed out to be a torpedo man aboard a Sixth Fleet destroyer. That was how the legal system back then dealt with “good boys” (and novice hoodlums like my brother) who’d gotten on the wrong path. That being said, busting into someone’s occupied home armed isn’t teenage hijinx and back then it would have gotten him just as shot as this “yute”.
Breaking into a house is on a whole different level. Often home invaders rape and kill those at home. I was no saint as a teen but even then I knew where to draw a line. Never put others in jeopardy.
I was the same type of kid. My oldest son went through something similar and now my youngest (turned 16 today) is causing us great grief. We grew out of it and I hope my youngest does as well as today is a completely different world.
There is a difference between breaking into vending machines and exchanging gunfire with someone in their home while trying to kick in their door.