http://www.ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=908
Janis Ian - At Seventeen (Live, 1976)
Bob Kuczewski - 2011/12/22 18:01:13 UTC
That song says a lot about the struggle of young people to fit in and find their own place in a judgemental world.
You mean like when other people who don't know anything about them step in and judge what kinds people they should be and relationships they should be permitted?
It's a fragile time and that's why we have laws to protect young people from being abused during that vulnerable time in their lives.
1. Who's "WE"? Fifty-one percent?
2. "We" have laws which pretty much GUARANTEE that certain categories of young people will have the hell abused out of them when they're young people - and forever afterwards.
3. There are lotsa vulnerable times in peoples lives. Pick a double digit age and I can probably link it to a suicide.
Since I suspect you're commenting about Tad's ban, I'll offer a comment of my own.
Oh good. Yet another one.
I suspect Tad would identify with those "misfit" feelings at 17.
Sometimes how much one feels like a misfit depends upon the group with which one is associated. For example, someone with a triple digit IQ will do just fine in a physics classroom but feel like a freak at an aerotow operation.
I think it's a shame that he was probably shunned and possibly ridiculed (or worse).
Maybe not as much as you think. This is a dumb jock culture and when you get good on a diving board or dune you can own the place - even if you never amounted to much on the football field.
But when he became a 30 year old man and decided to enter into a homosexual relationship with a 12 year old boy, he took advantage of that same fragile time for his own benefit.
1. The assumption, of course, being that all relationships and the aspects come about as the results of DECISIONS and/or that only one person (the older - OBVIOUSLY) was making them.
2. And AGAIN... It wouldn't have been NEARLY as horrific if Tad had entered into a HETEROsexual relationship with a twelve year old boy. Right?
3. Yeah, he took advantage of that same fragile time for his own benefit. It's not like there could possibly have been any MUTUAL feelings involved.
That's when he completed the cycle and became the abuser.
Yep, that's the only take the head shrinker industry will tolerate so it must be true. Otherwise the quacks wouldn't make nearly as much money as they do treating perps and victims.
He may have tried (and is still trying) to convince himself that it was good for the boy.
1. Yeah. I'm TOTALLY delusional. Incapable of looking at things objectively and rationally (meaning reaching the same conclusions as you do).
2. And you have, of course, talked to the other party to confirm beyond all doubt that he's totally lined up with your take.
But at the age of 12, that boy didn't have the maturity to make that kind of decision.
Because YOU say so. I, for one, at the age of twelve - or any other - would NOT have wanted you dictating what decisions I did and didn't have the maturity to make. At the age of twelve I wasn't all that impressed with a lot of the decisions people various multiples of my age were making. And I'm still not struck dumb with awe.
That boy was the confused, shunned "misfit" from that song.
Right. He didn't have the perfect black and white vision of right and wrong that you do.
Tad took advantage of that confused, shunned misfit.
Yep. That's the ONLY POSSIBLE take on the issue.
That's disgusting to me.
1. Fine. It disgusts me that you feel you can make calls and judgments like that.
2. Don't for a nanosecond assume that all of these relationships involve a confused, shunned misfit or two.
In a sense, the US Hawks is being founded by a large percentage of "misfits".
I'm not at all sure I have that impression. Seems to me like a lot of the same testosterone poisoned halfwits one finds at pretty much any other diver congregation.
But that's not all bad because the United States itself was founded by many people who didn't "fit in" with what was happening in Europe.
A lot of the people who founded the United States were misfits because they were fanatical religious witch burning whack jobs and Europe couldn't stand them any more than I can.
But even misfits need to hold each other accountable to some standards.
How 'bout some of you misfits leaving some of us other misfits the hell alone and instead work on your own problems to the point at which you're perfect enough to pronounce judgment?
I believe that Tad took advantage of that boy...
Your welcome to your BELIEFS. Just be real careful about portraying them as FACTS.
...and is justifying it with the same logic that he uses to justify everything else he says or does.
No no. I've never had much luck with logic in any hang gliding circles or other religious organizations. Bent pins and 130 pound Greenspot will ALWAYS be with us so anything more nuanced doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell.
That's where I drew the line.
1. All by yourself after failing to get the feedback from the rest of the association you had hoped for.
2. While you're busy drawing lines is there any chance of you dealing with people who sign off with:
Preflight, Hangcheck, Know you're hooked in.
preferably BEFORE the next person gets killed? (Just kidding.)
It's certainly sad to watch young people shun and bully their outcasts as described in this song.
It's sad to watch ANYBODY shun and bully outcasts - but that's the American Way. So what are ya gonna do?
But the only thing worse in that case is to watch adults taking advantage of those outcasts for their own pleasure.
1. Is that something you actually WATCHED with respect to my situation? Or is that something you feel perfectly secure in ASSUMING?
2. Too bad we don't seem to be the least bit concerned about a wife and a couple of little girls getting a last view of a husband/father hanging from the basetube just off launch at Mingus but this issue and discussion is just SO MUCH MORE entertaining. And it's just so much easier and more fun to go after somebody like me than somebody like Matt Taber or Steve Wendt.
That's abusing someone who's already been abused.
Yeah, that's obviously what it was ALL about. 'Cept there were a lot of people fewer thousands of miles and decades removed from the situation than you are who had a different take on things.
At age twelve I get to pick whether I want someone like you around or somebody like me around. Guess which way I'd be leaning.
(Gee it's so much fun dealing with amateur vigilante psychiatrists a couple of dozen years after the quacks with the certificates had their legal shots at making my life as miserable as they could get away with. Oh well, now US Hawks is as pure as the driven snow - composed only of people with OUTSTANDING and unimpeachable characters. And that's all that really matters.)
,
I second that 
Put up or shut up. We shouldn't have to listen to an admitted drunk 
