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I had no idea my child was this stupid’: Mother releases footage of teenage son, 14, being thrown into the air on his bike when a vehicle ploughs into him during a game of ‘swerve the car’
One of the truths of this world is that teenage boys are stupid, very stupid indeed.
That mixture of hormones and bravado makes them so. One of the more important societal jobs is to shepherd them through this to something like adult behaviour.
You know, that thing which kicks in when the testosterone levels decline around 45 to 50?
Teenage boys are stupid. Labour wants votes at 16!
Conclusion: Labour tacitly admit that if you’re stupid you have a higher chance of voting for them.
How astonishingly refreshing not to see her blaming everyone but her son, or demanding ‘the authorities’ do something…
+1 Julia
And the boy is working off the repairs.
All rather inspiring, until Deathless Plod appears at the end.
Is this the modern version of “last across the road” when the truck approaches?
No new thing under the sun, etc.
The mother is shocked; that I can understand. But what about the father? Presumably he did similar things when he was a teenager?
Oh:
The car only just hit him, because it stops at the bike. If it had been going faster, it would have been more than a fall from the bike, broken by landing on the bonnet. In fact, this counts as bike hits car rather than vice versa, in my opinion.
We get kids doing this down my street, abetted by the family who have a disturbed teenage boy and who live nearly opposite.
It is a clear case where the boy needed a public birching to send a message to other idiots.
But he is then seen hitting the car in slow motion and toppling over on to the pavement
I doubt he hit the car in slow motion, unless he or someone else has the rare ability to slow down time, which would be a bigger story that some dumb twat swerving his bike in front of a moving car.
Well, there used to be the caution thing, kicked in to temper the hormones. Learned by experience of what happened the last time the hormones asserted themselves.
Trouble is, people are so determined to wrap kids in cotton wool, they don’t get to learn this early on. That there may be consequences. Comes as a helluva surprise when the uncaring world bites them.
Damn, I’ve got another 30 years of toil before he develops a brain!
BiS: agreed. Learning about deceleration best done while still a toddler on a trike; gravity by falling out of trees or climbing frames as a five year old; momentum by being struck by a swing; looking for cars by walking to school (under supervision to begin with). All before testosterone takes over.
It happened in NYC, too:
‘According to many witnesses, Saipov shouted “Allahu Akbar” upon exiting a Home Depot rental truck after intentionally driving the wrong way on a busy bike lane near the World Trade Center — the site of the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil. After striking several people, witnesses say he “crashed deliberately into a school bus carrying at least three children,” CNBC reports.’
“teenage boys are stupid”: no. Strictly, they are insane. Plain different thing.
In defence of boys, it’s a lot to do with brain development and girls are just as dumb but in different ways.
The frontal cortex isn’t fully developed until the mid-20s. That’s the bit that likes planning and thinking ahead. Until then the older (in evolutionary terms) parts of the brain (instant gratification with no thought of the consequences) hold sway.
Of course it’s still usually a battle even as we get older. It’s why people do dumb things they regret and wonder they they did them.
It’s why people should only get the vote at 26 rather than 18 (or even 16 as Labour want).
Youth favours socialism because If you’re incapable of considering the future, socialism’s pat answers can seem superficially and immediately attractive and superficial is all their young brains can cope with.
26? 35 say I: once they’ve put a useful bit into the pot after years of drawing money out.
I can’t watch internet fail videos, it feels like visiting bedlam to chortle at the inmates.
Nothing wrong with chortling at inmates, Hallowed Be. Reason why televised parliament, isn’t it?
BiS- well when i do watch that it feels more like watching a farce, but oh so wish that Tarzan wielding the mace was captured on camera. I think i would laugh at that.
“intentionally driving the wrong way on a busy bike lane ”
Is there a right way to intentionally drive a truck on a bike lane?
“The frontal cortex isn’t fully developed until the mid-20s.”
I guess we wouldn’t be here if the brain started thinking before the penis did.
@BiG
“I guess we wouldn’t be here if the brain started thinking before the penis did”
The whole history of evolution neatly summarised in a single sentence. Well done, Sir.
You know, that thing which kicks in when the testosterone levels decline around 45 to 50?
When you develop the grumpy old man syndrome.
“The whole history of evolution neatly summarised in a single sentence. Well done, Sir.”
Thanks, but not quite.
The whole history of evolution in a single sentence would be:
“I guess we wouldn’t be here if the brain started thinking before the penis did, neither would we be here if the brain hadn’t start thinking after the penis did.”
started.
Clearly need to evolve a bit myself.
“Is this the modern version of “last across the road” when the truck approaches?
No new thing under the sun, etc.”
When I met Mrs BiND she was teaching at a forces school in Celle, Germany. Every year they used to march the kids down to a spot on a main road at the side of one of the married quarters patches and show them where one of their predecessors had been killed playing chicken.
She reckoned it didn’t work as they still had complaints form German motorists about Brit kids playing chicken on that stretch of road.
BiG
I prefer the first – far more snappy / concise – very requotable..:)
What Andrew C said, +1
The ideal situation would be for every teenage boy to have an escapade that could have gone horrifically wrong, but didn’t—the sort of thing that will make him stop dead in the street thirty years later and wonder how the fuck he’s still alive.
BiCR,
How many 50+ year-olds haven’t had that experience do you think? I’ll wager not many from my generation. I’ve had more than a couple of episodes that weren’t related to my time in the Army.
military conscription solved some of these ‘problems’ in the 40s.