That's the best and most important bit.
17 year olds
- Thread starter WinstonWolfe
- Start date
That's the best and most important bit.
Where's Mono when you need her? She's in ICU isn't she?
Haven't seen them lately but there was a Mother with her wheelchair bound son who needed 24/7 care in our neighbourhood. He didn't crash, he just was destroyed by the alcohol and it wasn't gross alco poisoning.
I've been toying with making this post but didn't think you wanted to know how an old bustard felt. Bugger it. I will.
The younger ones here are saying "Think of when you were young!" When I was that age alcohol was unobtainable for anyone not earning a wage. It was bloody expensive and junior wages were poor so that group (working kids) would "be brave" and buy a box of beer occasionally. I have no recollection of organized binge drinking, even though I left home young and was in the services before I was 18. I was 30 years old and in NZ before I ever smelt "grass".
The girls were almost never part of it. Usually it was after a football game or some "bloky" thing and strictly beer.
Reading this thread I am thankful that I have no teenagers, and this is a big call, no grand kids.
ps I'm bewildered why so many of you believe this is "harmless" just as long as nobody was driving. WAKE UP! It is destructive behavour for the boys because alcoholism is a heavy cross to bear. It is potentially destructive for the girls because "single motherhood" ain't what it's cracked up to be. I will leave the "sexual health" aspect alone and only brush on the link between binge drinking and illicit drug use.
It just crossed my mind: The term "binge drinking" didn't exist in my time.
Never said it was harmless, but unfortunately times have changed.
When i first turned 18 i went to the club lots with my friends - always designated driver and never touched a drop, but if i went to mates or wasn't driving i'd drink, but never too much. Now that i've moved to Melbourne and started dating a 24 year old and hanging out with all his friends i think i've been to the club twice the whole time, although i find i drink more now. I don't get drunk, but i do drink a lot more and i've also turned into more or less a housewife - minus the house and the wife..
Anyway, WW i didn't realise there was SO much alcohol - i mean i saw the photos but didn't realise it worked out to 467 standard drinks!
Can i ask though, and i'm surprised no one else has yet - when does your son turn 18?
Trust me Bon. Your grand parents were never involved in this wild behavour. (OK 99% weren't
) The logic/justification is faulty. Children accuse their parents of smoking (tobacco) and drinking (beer) and say they are just doing the same. They are not really. They take behavour the parents MAY have done (Mum didn't but what the heck!) and assume the same rights but at a far younger age and use that as a base line of "good behaviour". What was an occasional "blast" for the oldies becomes the normal weekend for todays brats. (Sorry WW
)If they really want to get up the nose of their parents outrageous behaviour doesn't cut it.
OK I'm about to take the thread further than it was meant to go and I have never voiced this opinion publicly before: But what does a young lady do when she wants to stamp her independence today? In my day they "hung out" with boys and smoked but this really was a minority. Today this is passe'. "All the girls" go to binge parties, so what's next? PORN
Come out of the closet and admit you've browsed there. I have. There are literally millions of young ladies who "bare it all" for the cameras. Ask yourself why. It's hard to be noticed as a rebel today is why.
I wore pink shirts and suede shoes. Seriously!!!!
Bon, this was his first time at home alone. Considering his history of being predictably logical in considering the consequences of defying us, I expected him to do what he said. That he didn't was out of character.
Yes I had mates over and drank, but not until I had built a lot of trust being left alone since 16. The times I had mates over in my teens, usually for card nights, they had to drive home that night, so the drinking was never 'get para cos we're bored and too stupid to do anything else'. Usually there was a few hundred bucks on the table to motivate everyone to keep a clear head.
Whenever we had parties, one or both parents were there. Further, straight out of school, I entered the world of grown ups, working full time in a bank. I had to roll up during the week sober, and after 6 months of nightclubs and booze on the w/e, I came to value them so much (and money) that I detested wasting them sleeping off a hangover for half my downtime. I know that sounds uncool to some who get smashed most w/e's while living a life subsidized by Mommy.
Sunfish, the big diff between our era and this, is there's more parents' money sloshing around, whether to directly fund the fun, or subsidize everything else while brats booze, toke, tab, and snort. I put the blame fair and square on boomer parents too fuzzy, kewl, and laissez faire to do otherwise. They need to own what their automaton zombie larvae get up to.
Following up on young kids and car crashes, I worked in the Anatomy Dept when studying physiotherapy. I sometimes sat in on preparing corpses to be anatomical cadavers, for students to learn anatomy. Every now and again we got a young'un in. I could go through the procedure of shaving them, sticking cannulas in their femoral artery and vein, turning the water tap on into the fem art. to push all the blood out the femoral vein, then swapping over to preservative and fixative. A day later, I might saw off the limbs and head to prepare specimens for various student groups. Some would be skinned, while others would have various muscles removed to expose the joints.
I've seen the corpses of around 140 people, and around a dozen people die in front of me. It's life experience most don't get today, and more the pity, cos it makes you aware of how temporary life is, and how fragile the human body.
Further, in Emergency and ICU, I've seen and heard the piercing shrill of people mangled, impaled, limbs hanging by several threads of skin, whole limbs burnt black......morphine not touching the sides. Some things I saw made me faint and several made me vomit. Several gave me night mares for weeks. As a physio, we also get to deal with the aftermath. The lost limbs, teaching people how to walk and eat and write and use a wheelchair, or a prosthetic limb. We also get to clear the chests of young car crash victims who get dumped in a nursing home full of old people who smell of death. Some of them are nothing more than breathing unconscious bodies. Others have brain damage and you have the same conversations with them every week, cos their memories are shot.
Those driven by adrenalin these days, have zero comprehension of what it is to be locked into a body/machine that doesn't work.
Teens would benefit from standing 2 feet away and looking front and square into the eyes of a corpse......and experiencing what it is exactly that is looking back at them.
Maybe then, they'd have some of the oneupmanship bravado knocked out of them.
SF, this is a private school with too many nouveau riche parents.
TBH is a teacher there, so we know what the parents are like.
Wouldn't have been hard for our sprog to have a spare $50-100 lying around.
Though unlike others, that would have taken a month or more to accumulate without our knowledge. He makes around $150 a week for 8 hours work, and there's tips on top we're not supposed to know about.
I find it funny that at 17 it was his very first time home alone. Maybe my parents were much more trusting in me or stupid (which ever way people decide to choose) but i clearly recall being left alone many times in an old skating rink where we lived upstairs at the age of 8.
Then again, my Mum tells me how i scared her so badly when i was about two. I woke up earlier than Mum and Dad and took it upon myself to make my own breakfast - using the toaster and the assistance of my little step that i used to reach the basin to brush my teeth.
I can see you are a very strict parent - and that's great, especially in this day and age when kids get away with blue murder, i just hope it doesn't backfire. In some ways it did on my parents in my younger years as i believe we wouldv'e been closer, although it has worked out well since then.
I can't remember why I headed off on this tangent but I present this as evidence of what was considered fun once and what is "blech" today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAh1IMGexH8&feature=related
If you like music it is worthy of a few minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAh1IMGexH8&feature=related
If you like music it is worthy of a few minutes.
That clip reminds me of why I used to be scared of gay men. Where's Jamie Redfern these days?
Didn't like Liberace?
Hows this then:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv6IKgiyzMw&feature=related
ps I love loud music.
I left home when I was 17 (to go to university). And I was going out with school friends drinking when I was 15 or 16 (never parties at my parents' place though - it would have been wrecked). While I was never a huge drinker, there were a number of occasions that reached the vomiting stage, including one particularly wild weekend when I was billeted in another town for a squash tournament and was out with my host on both Friday and Saturday nights partying and hooning around in his car (an old Mini with holes in the floor that always needed push starting) with another 6 or 7 people and many bottles of beer. The worst part of that weekend was I had to play in the finals on Sunday, and boy, was I ever feeling seedy!
Of course university had its moments as well, including nearly getting bowled by a car while DUI on my bicycle as I was riding home from a 21st birthday party - another occasion that had resulted in a few rounds of vomiting (can't let free alcohol go to waste). I remember on that occasion thinking I was going well, drinking scotch all night and not feeling drunk at all - until I opened the door to go outside and was hit with air that was probably 15 degrees colder than inside. Wow, I didn't realise the stars moved around the sky that quickly...
Since leaving university though I've been a very light drinker, and for many, many years now have barely touched the stuff.
GP
Hi WW
I'm probably aged between Sunfish and yourself, grew up in a working class area but went to a reasonably exclusive public school and as such saw both sides of the tracks,
except for the $$$$$$$$$'s not much difference.
Thought the punishment was a tad harsh but not inappropriate, the important part is how the relationship progresses from here, remember your son is not a saint but a teenager with a still developing brain.
Being involved with 4 generations, parents, self and 2 generations of children I find it
curious that the younger generations are always claimed to be lazier, takes more drugs, drinks more, drives more irresponsibly, less manners and so on, whereas the older generations intelligence improves out of sight once the younger generation become parents.
The road toll has been touched on in this thread and I would consider that some of the drivers(pun intended) of the toll are drugs, drink, responsibility and manners, perhaps
worth reading this link.
http://www.cycle-helmets.com/fatalities-australia-80-02.pdf
Quote:
"2.5 A range of measures have been adopted in recent decades in an
effort to mitigate this tragedy, with some considerable success. The
low point of road safety was the late 1960s and 1970s, when road
accidents consistently claimed in excess of 3000 lives every year
nationally, representing 25–30 fatalities per 100 000 population
every year.
2.6 The worst year was 1970, with 3798 killed, or 30.4 fatalities per 100
000 population. Since then, the death rate has more than halved,
despite a near doubling of the population, distances travelled
having more than doubled, a threefold increase in vehicle
registrations, and trebling of the number of people holding drivers
licences."
This report is out of date, but I believe the figures have improved again.
Thank g?d for the good old days, what ever your generation.
Cheers
Pete
I'm probably aged between Sunfish and yourself, grew up in a working class area but went to a reasonably exclusive public school and as such saw both sides of the tracks,
except for the $$$$$$$$$'s not much difference.
Thought the punishment was a tad harsh but not inappropriate, the important part is how the relationship progresses from here, remember your son is not a saint but a teenager with a still developing brain.
Being involved with 4 generations, parents, self and 2 generations of children I find it
curious that the younger generations are always claimed to be lazier, takes more drugs, drinks more, drives more irresponsibly, less manners and so on, whereas the older generations intelligence improves out of sight once the younger generation become parents.
The road toll has been touched on in this thread and I would consider that some of the drivers(pun intended) of the toll are drugs, drink, responsibility and manners, perhaps
worth reading this link.
http://www.cycle-helmets.com/fatalities-australia-80-02.pdf
Quote:
"2.5 A range of measures have been adopted in recent decades in an
effort to mitigate this tragedy, with some considerable success. The
low point of road safety was the late 1960s and 1970s, when road
accidents consistently claimed in excess of 3000 lives every year
nationally, representing 25–30 fatalities per 100 000 population
every year.
2.6 The worst year was 1970, with 3798 killed, or 30.4 fatalities per 100
000 population. Since then, the death rate has more than halved,
despite a near doubling of the population, distances travelled
having more than doubled, a threefold increase in vehicle
registrations, and trebling of the number of people holding drivers
licences."
This report is out of date, but I believe the figures have improved again.
Thank g?d for the good old days, what ever your generation.
Cheers
Pete
I believe that a lot of the problem with the youth these days relates to the fact that too many of them have a lot of money. They don't value it because it comes easy. They are not expected to work for it. Centrelink start giving them money (if the parents don't work) from age 15/16. Then those with parents that do work pressure their parents for the same (or more). No wonder the young generation have an entitlement mentality.
Both my kids thought I was incredibly mean. If they wanted to have money they had to work for it. No free lunch! Then, I made them save half of it. Sheesh, the arguments from Lil especially on this one. It was her money and she should be able to waste it with the rest of them. Well, I think (hope) she sees the value of this now that she is older.
CORRECTION! I may have left you while I went up the street to get some emergency supplies. It would have been only for a VERY short time.
The first time I left you at home alone for anything longer than an hour was when you were 14. I remember having a conversation with your father about that very subject and that many start babysitting at that age. Again, it was only while we had a night out, not an overnighter or anything longer than this.
Last edited:
I presume you are implying current youth are not as bad as previous, based on the road toll. I think it has more to do with seat belts, radar, rbt, 0.05 limit, more roundabouts, better overall road design, air bags, hoon cars being confiscated, road defect notices, acquisition of driver's licences requiring higher skills, knowledge, and experience.
agree. too many parents cave in and provide too much for their kids expecting too little in return. we quarantine around 80% of their job income. it goes into term deposits or the offset account at the moment. this is all with their approval and understanding though.
We hear that all the time about Gen X.
But I am seeing and reading more about Gen Y that suggests the pendulum is swinging back. They are said to be more community and service focussed and embrace things like volunteering.
When it comes to road safety, there were no "good old days".
As young drivers our attitude towards drunken driving was terrible. (I'm trying to think of a stronger word) and we all had mates die.
You quote 1970 as the peak in road deaths and I can understand why. In those days the cars were death traps and two improvements made a big difference: Collapsible steering columns and seat belts. There are of course thousands of other improvements in both primary and secondary safety incorporated in today's cars. I think they are now excellent examples of man's ingenuity.
