Sigh. North Carolina has beautiful (and cold, this past weekend) mountains, a lovely coast, and the in-between is pretty nice too. We have the NC symphony (and lots of local ones), numerous science museums, a great state art museum (and lots of local ones), the largest private residence in the world (where there were daffodils blooming by a stream, even on this cold weekend), etc. I've loved living here for over thirty years, and I get very grumpy about stereotypes regarding the "backwardness" of North Carolina.
On Saturday morning, before heading to Asheville to celebrated daughter's and older son's birthdays, I checked the local news for the weather one more time. There was a headline about an NC man shooting his daughter's laptop along with another headline about an SUV crashing into a local furniture store.
Darwin award time?!
At least the second article didn't deserve a Darwin Award because the floor mat got tangled up in the pedals.
I had to wonder about the first one, though. What kind of an idiot goes around shooting a computer? Not only did I not have time to read the article, I also didn't want to read another article that would give people the impression that North Carolinians are backwards and thoughtless.
I had a wonderful weekend (more on that in another post) spent wandering around Asheville, eating in good (and warm!) restaurants, having long conversations, sitting with dear husband at the hot tub in the hotel (no, not that romantic - there were four active elementary school age girls playing Marco Polo in the larger pool at the time), going to Mass at daughter's church, and, most of all, enjoying having my family together. I didn't think about the news at all.
Imagine my surprise when, getting home happy, but tired, I got online to wind down just to find that this person had made a video of himself, and it had gone viral. Facebook friends were mentioning it all over the place.
For those of you who haven't read about it, you can go do something else and remain blissfully unaware what happened is this: The daughter posted a rant about her parents to her Facebook friends. She doesn't want to do chores, she wants to be paid, and she likes to swear.
I bet you've never heard of a teen like that before.
I hope the sarcasm is obvious.
The father posted a video of his response, including reading her post, refuting it, and shooting her computer.
A few points:
- Her post was meant to be private for only her friends. The post was not available to the general public, and he only read it because he was updating her computer. He says that, because of what has happened in the past, she should have expected him to be reading her Facebook posts.
However, he does not say that he ever told her that the punishment for her private Facebook posts would be to have them read, quite publicly, on YouTube.
- He shows a printout of her post, which is quite long for a Facebook post. Given that many people don't like to read more than a few paragraphs on the internet, few of her friends probably finished reading it. Far more people have encountered it on his video.
- The chores that he says she does are not unusual. Our older kids had more chores when they were her age (15 yo). Have they always enjoyed doing chores? Of course not. I don't either. I even might complain about my chores occasionally.
There's a balance there, however. My kids know that I won't put up with much whining. In fact, we often quote a line from a Maura O'Connell concert when she mentions that she can't stand whining. I try not to complain too much. However, you need to vent occasionally.
Was her complaint bratty and potty-mouthed. Yes. Might she be embarrassed about it in a few years? Hopefully.
- Is she complaining about things which seem trivial given his experiences and responsibilities? Yes. That's part of being a parent. You understand things about the seriousness of life that your kids HOPEFULLY don't understand yet.
- She was quite a drama queen about her complaints, which isn't genetically surprising given his reaction. Shooting a computer (with expensive bullets!) and posting it on YouTube is definitely a drama king reaction. It sounds like something out of The Onion (a satirical news site).
For the rest of his life, when this IT professional applies for a job, companies will Google him and find this. Even if he takes the video down, the news articles and blog posts will remain. If you had to choose between applicants for an IT job, which would you choose - someone who has a very innocuous public profile, or someone who embarrasses himself and his daughter, quite publicly on the Internet, and demonstrates his self control by shooting a laptop?
Other views at:
If it helps, in my mind this guy is from Texas. I'm not the only one who thinks that either. :-)
Posted by: Reticula | February 13, 2012 at 12:17 PM
It's tempting, but it also feels like pushing our problems off on someone else. :)
Posted by: M Light | February 13, 2012 at 08:55 PM