Stupid Kids:
I just saw a sad story on local news. Six teenagers killed in a one car crash. Of course the ignorant anchor man had to say something stupid, "The car lost control". Not the dummy driving, not the inept moron behind the wheel, "The car lost control." Yeah, right.
My first thought was, "what a stupid kid. No driving ability, no common sense, just a car and five friends and obviously doing something stupid."
Then a memory came to me. Something we did as kids, high school age, ignorant, stupid and invulnerable. Isn't everyone at that age?
I gew up in south Florida, spent some time in the south/central part of the state where there were sugar cane fields. Sugar cane can grow to 8 to 10 feet high and very dense. The cane fields were divided off into 1/4 mile square grids. Dirt roads surrounded each square with four way intersections at each corner. We used to go into those fields, especially on full moon nights and play what we called Russian Roulett with our cars.
Three, four, five or more cars would all start from one four way intersection. Each car would alternately take a different direction. One left, one right, one straight ahead and then left again depending on how many 'players' were in on the game. Obviously the more cars, the more dangerous the game was.
The idea was to run without headlights and drive as fast as you could on the dirt roads blasting though the four way intersections which due to the height of the cane, were blind intersections. The potential for a high speed 'T' bone crash was ever present.
We never had a crash. Had a few close calls, which we laughed about later at the A&W Root Beer Stand, but we all survived our, STUPIDITY.
We were the lucky ones. The six kids killed yesterday weren't so fortunate.
Tom