fantomfreke

i used to sit in my yard on halloween with a paintball gun and 2 cans of paintaballs. one frozen one not. we have a huge problem with egging and brickbats (sparkplugs fired from a slingshot) on halloween. i truthfully dont ever give liability or legal issues a second thought. if you didnt want your teens to get shot with a paintball gun, you should have raised them better, and they should have had more sense than to run around egging people and get caught.

AMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!
thats another prob, people need to beat their kids more often lol. and before someone says "omfg!!! child abuse" i mean whip not beat... but yeah, they need a beating.

back on track, yeah i would have hid the bikes, then went onto the roof and scared the holy bejeezus out of them.

johnnypatrick

You guys are really hitting close to home on some important ideas. Here in Saint Louis we just had a 12 year old boy stab a 13 year old girl to death. This punk used to terrorize the "hood". Walk up and down the street and call adults names. No one would do anything because they were afraid of going to jail themselves.I mean if you jump off the porch and kick his little ass he'll tell the cops. This little punk was too dangerous to send another kid his age after him. No daddy in the home. No mom really. Ferral kids.

rcsart

At about the age of twelve I remember a friend and me getting peppered with rock salt for playing on farm equipment and attempting to ride a farmer’s horse. Neither of us cried to our folks in fear of worse consequences. I would be willing to bet that to this day my dad would still kick my butt for crying about being punished for doing something wrong. I have three kids and refuse to bend to society’s belief that punishing children is wrong. I still believe it takes a village to raise kids and hate that the lawyers and courts have tied our hands. Just wait until the world rushes up on these kids, and they start facing the fact that the real world doesn’t care about their feelings. That their boss wants eight hours of work for eight hours of pay, that that mean ole judge is actually going to put their non Paris Hilton bottom in jail for driving drunk. Then I guess we will have to allow bosses, lawyers, and cops to be sued for upholding the law, should be interesting.

Curtis

Black Beauty

Well since everyone is reminiscing, and today is no where near are forgiving as yesterday, what exactly where the kids doing on the roof?
If they were just playing, again we`ve all done that. If they came/went up there for a look see, we`ve all done that.
Which of you guys/gals would`ve expected to get shot (by anything) when/if you`d been in a similar situation?
And, which of you would over look this TODAY as a lesson learned, if your kid was in this scenario?

rcsart

Maybe the best way to handle it would have been to have the cops waiting at the bottom of the ladder. Let them scare the kids with trespassing charges, defiantly not a shooting offence. Although do something to punish them on your own and get sued, do nothing and one of them get’s hurt and you get sued. If you were to admit to the parent of the hurt child you saw what they were doing and did nothing, their response, you’re the adult you should have done something. Admit you chewed their bottom and confiscated their bike, you’re an adult you have no right to yell at my kid or steal their bike. IMHO both the parent and the child at that point are in the wrong and should have to answer to someone for the misbehavior. I agree I did a lot of foolish things and could have been hurt or killed but at least I did have a respect and fear for those consequences, most of the problem today is total lack of respect and no fear of consequences. WHY?

M DC

why not let bumble bee leak lubricant on them

Goose

Amen to every thing you said especially the part about the real world hitting them in the face one day...we are creating a nation of wimps with no self respect or responsibility ...Tom Brokaw hit it on the head with his Greatest Generation book....they truly are/were.....



Goose

Goose

And Johnny you are dead on also...can't touch the little poor misunderstood soul lest you be sued out your ying yang....30-40 years ago he would have been knocked straight to the moon



Goose

Black Beauty

I`m not seeing any replies from active parents, what if your kid came home without his bike, or it was damaged, or he`d been paintballed?

captain howdy

I agree. I was all about mischief when I was a kid. I can't tell you the countless number of buildings, businesses, schools, hotels, parking garages, abandoned buildings, and so forth I've climbed to the roof of. I think its okay to yell at the kids and tell them to get down. That's about the worst that happened to me climbing on roofs. The owner, an employee, a security guard, or some adult would tell us to leave so we would get down and move on. Anything beyond that is wrong. Calling the cops on a group of kids having fun is just a dick move unless they are doing something extreme like damaging/defacing the property. As a parent if my kid came home with bruises shot up by paintballs or missing their bike because they were out exploring and having fun with friends the person that harmed them doesn't want to feel my wrath. I'm not going to sue I'm going to get physical. At that point it makes no difference to me that my child was trespassing because the adult that harmed them should have known better than to hurt, endanger the safety of, or steal from children. I think people like that still enjoy being a bully. As an adult we should be above the point of hurting or pulling pranks on kids. Remember they are still kids and then remember what you were like when you were a kid. It seems like people forget what it’s like to be a child. I admit sometimes I've seen kids doing stuff that a lot of adults would have yelled at them for; I just turn my head, overlook it, and remember how much fun I had doing whatever they are doing when I was a kid. Hell if I see a group of kids skateboarding I've been known to stop and show them that old people still have skills even if it means I'm technically trespassing or loitering at the time and vandalizing for a lack of a better word (grinding and sliding on curbs and rails).