"Browse vintage stores, eat your favorite snack (onigiri), lie on your back in Prospect Park and stare at the clouds. Isn’t that the point of skipping school, after all? To sneak around, to steal time and space back from the arbitrary system that enfolds you? To hell with permission! That’s being a teenager — carving out a private life for yourself under the noses of the authority figures who surround you. Sasha said no, she would not be doing that. Not because she’s a Goody Two-shoes but because she’s too lazy to plan the subterfuge...."
Writes Matt Gross, in "Your Kids Can Handle Dangerous Ideas" (NYT).
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"she’s too lazy to plan the subterfuge"
When the kids who invented ghosting ghost on ghosting because ghosting is too hard, there's a problem.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) is a heavy influence on them.
Well, except for those right-wing ones Musk's Twitter might soon allow.
Some of the fastest growing up by myself and my friends was when we had to work as a group to develop ideas and execute plans to cover up something that happened when we were doing something were weren't allowed. Avoiding punishment is a powerful motivator. Even if that punishment is only being grounded or something.
The Des Moines school district had a MASS WALKOUT of classes, to protest transphobia (or something)
Needless to say, it was
a) Approved by the school (no penalties for missing classes)
b) Organized BY the school
c) fairly scarcely attended.. Most were Too Lazy to ditch
When we ditched school, we either went scuba diving, body surfing, 4-wheeling, motocross riding, rock climbing, spelunking or shooting. It was easy because only homeroom attendance was sent to the office. That meant you could leave campus at 10am and be back in time for sports practice. They changed the rules after we graduated.
Scotty's mom to Scotty in the Sandlot
- I don't want you sitting around in here all summer fiddling with this stuff like you did last summer and the one before.
- I know you're smart, and I'm proud of you.
- I want you to get out into the fresh air and make some friends.
- Run around, scrape your knees, get dirty.
- Climb trees, hop fences. Get into trouble, for crying out loud.
- Not too much, but some. You have my permission.
- How many mothers do you know who say something like that to their sons?
I love how his vision for what she'd do if she took the day off is so idealized: she'd shop in *vintage* shops, and dreamily laze in the park, not thinking about sex and drugs but staring at the *clouds* and certainly not holing up somewhere trashy and actually have sex with some awful boy. And of course the food she'd eat is something high class. No potato chips and beer for our girl Sasha. No drugs that just make you feel like you're staring at clouds....
Sasha said no, she would not be doing that. Not because she’s a Goody Two-shoes but because she’s too lazy to plan the subterfuge...."
Of course, Sasha wouldn't be doing THAT; because That would have consequences..
She wants Mommy and Daddy to call in, and excuse her.
Not because shes 'too lazy' because she's Too Cheap to pay for her actions
Out Professor said
so idealized: she'd shop in *vintage* shops, and dreamily laze in the park, not thinking about sex and drugs but staring at the *clouds*
It DOES make you wonder, who the boy is? Is he a classmate? Does he have a penis? An Afro?
You beat me to it with your snacks comment, Ann. I was thinking along the lines of how Doritos are good enough for most fly-over folk.
If you watched dogs in Prospect Park you would not lie on the grass.
Shared/shifted responsibility. Serenity now. Insanity later.
I never skipped school, but the stuff my friends and I did during and after our classes on campus was enough to have gotten us in considerable trouble, at least. The night-time raid on the backstage area to borrow some scenery flats for one of the guy's girlfriend's school play
(which I ended up in, but that's another story) was by far the most consequential.
It was well-planned (as befitted our JROTC training). We had the things staged as close to the doors as possible and about 8pm one weeknight we got took Rick's dad's truck and went to the campus. Backed it up next to the double doors on the side of the auditorium, a well-lit area but it couldn't be helped, and neither could the sudden and unexplained short of the truck's horn. No shit. Rick had to disconnect it.
As head of the stage crew Rick had the master key of course, the one that was supposed to never leave the school office outside of hours. Six minutes to load and tie down the flats, and off we went. We had to burgle them back in a week later.
But I never skipped.
Does this include not wearing a mask? And blowing off Zoom classes for the past two years?
The Left's idea of fighting the Man and rebelling is quite limited.
The idealized things to do is based on a preference for activities that children these days don't value. Most teenagers taking the day off will either be playing computer games online or surfing social media. Being unplugged in the park is not what they would do for fun. They might as well go to school if they are going to be unplugged.
I read something like this after reading about that horrible story in Chippewa Falls. And I ponder.
In grade 12, I skipped school in Oct. 1982 with a couple friends and we drove from Vancouver to Seattle to see The Who and the Clash at the Kingdome (great show). The funny thing though was that the day before, I was getting crapped on at school by one of the Vice Principals for skipping some class. I told her, by the way, I won't be here tomorrow either. After explaining to her what I was going to do, she seemed quite fine about it and I never heard another word.
I did manage to finally get suspended though on the last day of classes for doing a smoke show in the parking lot. I think school admin. had finally had enough of me. No wonder I eventually went to law school.
I have been tired of cool parents since I was 13
I don’t read the New York Times—are all the articles as sickeningly self-congratulatory as this one? And as oblivious? “I don’t care how my daughters turn out—as long as they aren’t Trumpies!” No wonder 2/3 of the country hates New York.
Children can handle dangerous ideas, as long as they are the dangerous ideas he approves of. Feh!
They might as well go to school if they are going to be unplugged.
They're not unplugged at school these days. My current principal begins staff meetings telling us to stop fighting with the kids over cellphones. That was after he told us to stop fighting with the kids over wearing their ids.
This year tardies are awful. On a daily basis one third to a half of my first period is tardy, often significantly. (We moved our starting time back an hour to 8:30 this year) I usually have two or three tardies every class period, every day.
At this point I'm scared that next year's first staff meeting is going to begin with telling us to stop fighting tardies.
She should have told Dad that she was going to shop at Walmart, and then have lunch, maskless, at Chick-fil-A, while planning her new job with the Trump Campaign.
Box of beer and a gravel road safari?
My folks found out about a couple times I cut school.A car load of us going into the Quad Cities and drinking pitchers of whisky sours, was not a good outcome for me. Tagging along with a buddy to look at a 68 chevelle was wrong, but understandable.
But as a farm kid, I skipped lots of class to stay home and drive tractor. The Principle said something to Dad in town, Dad said get back to him if my grades slipped.
I love how his vision for what she'd do if she took the day off is so idealized
These are the things the author would do if they could be a teenager again...with their 40-ish brain intact, of course.
Instead of working at jobs meant to be a relatively skill-less and entry level - and not a path to a 'living wage' (I guess meaning self-sufficiency) - they should become truck drivers for Walmart and make real money. Don't even need college hours, much less a college degree.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/07/walmart-says-it-is-raising-pay-for-truck-drivers-starting-training-program.html
Stories about McDonald workers who have been there for 5+ years and are complaining that their hourly wage rate has barely moved in all that time highlight how badly we educate our children on economic and financial matters.
Probability is that he is an overly-permissive friend-dad 24/7, so the most rebellious thing to do is to be responsible.
You can miss out school (won't that be cool?) why go to learn the words of fools?
He seems like one of those dads who will cheerfully pay for the abortions.
Grooming your... our [unPlanned] Posterity with "benefits". Keep women appointed, available, and taxable.
He seems like one of those dads who will cheerfully pay for the abortions.
Yeah. It would be like, such a burden. And four choices: abstention, prevention, adoption, and compassion, really?! Self-defense through reconciliation, anti-hero. Deny thy woman and man's dignity and agency. Don't say wicked solution, a human rite.
The soy and preciousness are strong with Gross.
I used to laugh at the takedowns of him on the old Die Hipster website.
Looks like nothing has changed.
Nothing used to irk me more than the wild tales of hilarious (and often dangerous) shenanigans that the baby boomer generation would experience just before criminalizing most of it. What would amount to a stern talking to for them, they assured would be a life altering punishment for us.
This is now impossible if you take your phone with you. I have a 15yo daughter. This is the most surveilled and monitored generation of young people ever, and most of them seem ok with things like their parents reading their private messages and monitoring their location at all times via "find my…" and similar apps. The subterfuge required would be far greater than her boomer dad could imagine.
In Texas a PVC potato cannon is legal to own if used solely for percussion effects (going boom). It is illegal to construct, possess or own a PVC potato cannon if is is used for sending projectiles out the tube. Because it is classified as essentially a cannon at that point, and acts as one.
So when I made my 12 year old son his first PVC potato cannon to play with in the woods with his friends and theirs, I made sure that all the potatoes in our house were removed, with him watching, to the top of the garbage cans outside the back door, for pickup next Tuesday by the garbage men. And when I next looked at the garbage cans Tuesday afternoon, sure enough, the potatoes were nowhere to be seen.
Parenting, it was fun.
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