Worse Eight Hour Flight Ever

Worst flight ever? This kid apparently screamed like a demon
during an entire eight hour flight this past summer from
Germany to New Jersey. He also climbed over
everything, including sometimes, passengers. 

Everybody's got stories of their Worst Flight Ever.

I think the people on an eight hour flight from Germany to New Jersey have one of the best stories.

A kid screamed like a demon during the entire flight. it really does sound like a horror movie. You can watch the video at the bottom of this post if you don't believe me.

This happened in August, but is getting more traction on line now.  The video tag line says the incident unfolded because the kid was addicted to technology and couldn't always have it, but I think more was going on.

This kid has problems. Screaming like that for a full eight hours? And climbing all over the seats and even people? Geesh!

Yes, we should be sympathetic to children who might have some sort of mental illness, but this still had to be The Worst for the rest of the people on the plane. I honestly don't know if the parents could have done their parenting job better, or that the kid might have autism or something else that made him uncontrollable.

This is only my opinion, but judging from the video, it didn't help that the mom seemed to try only half-heartedly to get the boy under control.  On some flights, I've had to deal with slightly unruly kids from time to time, but this is so out of control. My sympathies to the people who had to go through this.

Here's the video:

Mean Kids Burn Down Principal's House, Poison Teachers

Payette, Idaho Principal Mark Heleker outside his house,
destroyed by kids at the high school seeking
revenge for discipline Heleker meted out.  

A certain subset of kids have always misbehaved and a sliver of those kids retaliate against their teachers or principals.

It never ends well.

If two recent incidents say anything, though, a few of these kids are escalating the battles to dangerous new heights.

At last report, three teenagers had been arrested and one was being sought after they burned down the principals house in Payette, Idaho, Raw Story reports.

Local high school principal Mark Heleker had suspended the students a few days earlier.

Heleker and his wife were sleeping in the house at about 1 a.m. February 22, when the couple's adult daughter returned from walking the dog and saw flames coming out of the home's garage, Raw Story reported. 

Had the daugher not been awake and walking the dog, the couple could have been killed in the fire, the local fire chief said.

The house was destroyed.

The four students involved were found out when Heleker's adult son found some suspicious posts on social media.

Police interviewed students and studied posts on Facebook and Snapchat, which led authorities to the four teens.  Each one arrested so far has been charged with felony arson.

I guess they're in bigger trouble than whatever led to two of them being suspended from school earlier.

The four had rampaged through town that night, vandalizing cars and other objects before setting the Heleker house on fire.

Meanwhile, in Florida, three middle school students are in trouble for poisoning their teacher's soda by pouring in a bunch of hot pepper flakes, according to CBS Miami. 

In that case, I supposed the three kids didn't realize how dangerous that could be, but the teachers started choking and suffering shortness of breath. Luckily, she recovered.

Like in the Idaho case, this teacher had earlier disciplined at least one of the kids involved.

I guess nowadays, some kids, if disciplined, will go to extreme measures to get even. Maybe they think it'll teach the teachers.

Of course, it doesn't work. The kids end up in extreme trouble with the law. Um, think ahead, kiddies!

Seven Year Old Can't Pretend to Have a Grenade, or ELSE!

In what seems to be a contiuing war on children, a seven year old boy in Colorado is in big, big trouble because he pretended to throw a pretend grenade into a pretend box of evil, according to television station KDVR.

Alex, the thrower of the imaginary grenade that caused
imaginary destruction inside an imaginary evil lair.

The most casual observers of kids that age know they have a very active imagination and always play act scenarios like fighting evil, like this boy was doing. It's just the developmental process. They're unwittingly practicing for the challenges they will face as adults, even if those adult challenges involve unpleasant bosses and not evil and boxes and grenades.

To be clear, the boy had nothing in his hand. He just pretended to throw something and made a noise to depict an explosion when the evil in the box got killed by his "grenade."

KDVR quoted second grader Alex Evans, 7, this way:

“I was trying to save people and I just can’t believe I got dispended,” says Alex Evans, who doesn’t understand his suspension any better than he can pronounce it.
“It’s called ‘rescue the world,’” he says.

The school, as part of the national craze of zero tolerance that I repeatedly rant about and deplore, has these absolute rules against weapons, real or imaginary.

According to the Loveland Reporter Herald, the school district says the issue is more complicated than is being let on, but can't comment on individual kids.

Still, I have to wonder. As I've said before. Yes, we want safe schools. Yes, we want to teach all kids to behave and be respectful and nonviolent. But in a few schools, certainly not most schools, common sense is not in the curriculum.

Alex's suspension seems to have grown out of what seem to be perfectly reasonable rules the school has. No fighting or weapons, real or imagined are allowed. People, and the school as a whole must be treated with respect.

My guess is that the ban on imagined fighting and weapons stems from a reasonable opposition to say, some kids pointing an imaginary gun at a classmate and saying "I wish you were dead."

But there appears to be no distinction between that kind of negative behavior and simple, normal behavior or misunderstandings.

I came across an excellent op-ed piece written a couple years ago by attorney and author John Whitehead, who argues zero tolerance rules tie school administrators hands and dictate equal punishment for completely difference offenses. 

It pretty much comes down to meaning a seven year old who is playing cops and robbers by "shooting:" someone with his pointed finger is punished as harshly as another kid  dangerously and maliciously  points a loaded 9 mm Glock at classmates.

Or, maybe most zero tolerance policies are fine and do give administrators flexibility, and that in a few cases, school officials lack common sense.

It is true that these weird stories, like the seven year old with the "grenade" don't happen at most schools.

My question is, if this has been a problem for years now, why isn't anyone doing anything about it?  Shouldn't there be any consequences for the few school administrators out there can't manage any hint of common sense?

The reason I'm so worried about this is, as funny as these stupid incidents are, they teach kids exactly the wrong lessons. Do we really want to teach our future leaders to be completely inflexible, don't ask questions, don't determine what is actually going on, don't solve problems, don't think.

I'm not quite sure that's the recipe to create the world's best leaders. 
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