>A family from Vancouver recently returned home from vacation, only to find the house massively damaged by flooding. The cause?
Some asshole stuck their garden hose through the mail slot in the front door and turned it on.
Reports say that it was allowed to run for an entire day before somebody noticed what was happening and shut it off.
Damage was pretty severe. The hardwood floor was destroyed, and the basement ceiling and some walls had collapsed.
When informed by police that the culprits were likely kids messing around, Lexie Martin had this to say:
“I guess I just can’t believe kids can be that destructive, quite honestly, unless they were just on a dare.”
On a dare? What does that have to do with anything? Does a dare mean more these days than it did when I was growing up? Is being called a chickenshit such a bad thing now that it’s worth leaving a home in ruins to avoid it? Christ, remind me never to call your bluff. Anybody who would do something like this doesn’t need a dare to get him started, he would have done it anyway. What he does need is a few merciless beatings from his folks and maybe a few thousand hours fixing your house up for free so he’ll think twice about doing something like this again.
This kind of rationalizing to try to justify the actions of total shitheads is a big part of why the actions are taken in the first place. The only valid response to the why question is the shithead answer, and the more outs you offer and the more
apologies you accept,
the more advantage they’ll take. More often than not, clear, enforced consequences will get you a lot further than oh well, it’s ok, I’m sure there was a reason. You’d be amazed how quickly the big tough guy becomes just a kid when the tough guy’s actions come back to bite him on the ass. We need to start biting people again, it can’t do anything but good.