Wave Skipper

Our game when I was a kid was the guys would wait till the train was almost right up to where we were and then dash across on foot. I had one friend - kind of mean - who layed a whole line of train spikes along a track so that we could watch a frieght train go boom-be-de-boom-boom-boom as the engine ground it way through them. I suppose it was possible that might have derailed the thing had luck not gone with the engineer.

Of course back in those days the tricks we played on the cops were worse. But the cops were good guys then, not like the little goose-steppers of today that aim guns at kids in airports and who shoot kids playing with toy guns. In fact when I was a kid I played guns with my firends carrying a Russian WWII 7.62 rifle. I recall taking that rifle down to a shop in the middle of town to put a weld-slug into it to make it into a non-firing toy. It was about 1962 and no one driving by even batted an eye my direction. The guy running the welding shop just said, "Sure kid, it'll cost you 10 bucks." And at lunch the guys at school would all surround the motorcycle cop to hide him from the cars, and then when a speeder would come through, we'd step back and let him rip!

The young man is addicted to adrenaline and attention. If he lives through this stage maybe he will follow Sir Edmund's footsteps up Everest - where the average death rate among climbers historically has stood at 1 out of 5 - which is worse odds than playing Russian roulette with a six gun. Then when he dies in old age you can all extole him. Sorry the death rate today on Everest is 8.2% - it is K2 with the 1 in 5.

I believe it was the father of Taoism (Lao 'Tzu) who stated that when a nation's laws greatly increase, then crime and bandits abound.



NOTE:

I always taught my kids - virtual reality is better than reality - but first - while you are young - GO LIVE.