The World of Grandpa Don

She Died!

It was reported that the woman died. The family members and neighbors all said that this nice old lady was always good to people and always there to lend a hand. She had remained unconscious for 12 days after being found unconscious in her burning home.

There have been no reports (at this writing) on the 16 year old who shoved two packets of lit firecrackers into her mail slot on July 3rd. So, the rest of this is my guess.

As teens, we thrive on pranks. I know I have. Hopefully they are "innocent" pranks. We like to believe that there is such a thing. Much of the time the only thing that is "innocent" about them is that an innocent person takes the brunt of it. 

Our parents try to warn us. But I am afraid they warn us for the most part by telling us how much trouble we can get into if we get caught. The victim is seldom considered. 

In this case, I presume that the youngster never considered that any serious damage would be done, much less that the little old lady would die. He was just going to make a lot of noise and cause an annoyance. And it would be a lot of fun for him. At the same time he would show his friends how brave he was and that he would not get caught. It all went wrong! Tragically wrong!

Maybe we should change our focus. There is no way that a parent, before this tragedy,  would admonish a child not to stuff lit firecrackers into a mail slot. We can not guard against bad things from happening with a long list of "Don'ts". There is no way to anticipate everything that someone may do.

But maybe we can prevent this sort of thing by demonstrating that doing good and being good is admirable and has its rewards. Would this young man have done this if he was indoctrinated with the concept of being kind to everyone at all times? I know it would be bucking natural tendencies but if we started with our own actions as examples and we began the "kindness" education when children were infants, it may take hold. If we put more effort into rewarding good behavior the kids would want us to catch them at it instead of hiding bad behavior to avoid punishment.  It would also do something to solve the problem of some children misbehaving just to be noticed because when they are good, no one pays any attention to them. 

The thought in this boy's mind should not have been, "I think I can give this old lady a scare and get away with it." but simply, "I know what I can do ... but that would not be kind to the lady. ... I won't do it"

Let's always be more kind than we need to be.

Don Plefka
7/15/04