Pefect Example why the kids today are wusses.

In 1960 I was a 4 year old in BR.

I went to see a 5 year old neighbor who let two German Shepards out his backyard gate.

They were playful dogs, not mean, and they jumped on me, knocking me down.

I landed on the sidewalk, dented my skull, & required 44 stitches, 10 in my left eyelid alone, as my eyeball popped out.

(I am OK now except slightly worse vision in my left eye)

My mom and my dad's mom berated my dad to sue the neighbors.

They had no property insurance, and we could have taken their house and cars from them, basically wiping them out.

My dad was adamant that the only thing that he wanted was for them to pay for my hospitalization (3 days) due to their son's carelessness.

He's been gone for 30 years, but I am still proud to tell that story about my dad to this day.

It says a lot about the kind of man he was.

I wish more folks today were like that.

 

My dad was a high school teacher in the 70s. During the summers he worked as a mechanic at Sears. One day some crazy old broad drove through the store and penned him up against a wall. He broke his hip, back, his ribs punctured his lungs. The guy should have died. He didn't sue.

 

I'm sad to hear that you lost your dad when you were only 20 years old.

:thumb:

 

Thanks.

I think of him often, of the lessons he taught me, his dreams for us, and how much he loved his family.

And of the fishing and camping trips that we took together as a family all over the South.

And all of the LSU! football, basketball, and baseball games we attended together. Track meets too.

And how much of an :lsup: :tigerhead fan he really was. :thumb:

 

My dad is the exact same age as you (well, by a year, he was born in 57) and he just lost his dad this past year at the ripe old age of 86. It was tough though at the end there because he was one of those unfortunate elderly to be in a nursing home at the time of Katrina and had to be bused to Texas on a school bus with no A/C, for example.

I've mentioned my age on here right now, and with what I was going through as a 20 year old, I couldn't imagine losing my dad at that time.

 

You've said it all and it goes even further. Schools in many parishes have removed playground equipment (swings, monkey bars) because of law suits.

I have been in the public education system for 18 yrs. and was Principal of a school for 7. After my 6th year I sat in my Superintendent's office and told him I wanted to resign (It wasn't a spur of the moment decision). I'll never forget his face when he looked at me and said, "You're serious". He asked, "Why". My exact response was, "I asked myself why I would want this job and I couldn't think of a single reason".

He asked me if I'd stay one more year and I told him he'd done so much for me that I would then took a job as an assistant principal which is less money and a lot less BS.

Getting off the deep end but to make my point- the majority of the parents and kids are great (I love working with kids) but I found that old saying to be true about 20% of the parents occupying 80% of my time. Unfortunately, in relation to the

as you correctly stated, the squeaky wheels get the oil. :angryfire :angry: o:

 

Sounds like your fathers were both men of integrity. One of the things that just crushes my heart is seeing how many young kids today don't even have a father to go home to and play ball with or go hunting, or just talk to and hear them say they're proud of them.

My father is a retired attorney battling cancer. Two years ago he was told he had 2-3 mos to live but we got him in at Houston and he was in remission until recently having to start chemo. again but we are cautiously optimistic.

His best friend told me he'd never lost a case in front of a jury and since he'd never told me that, I asked him about it and he said it was true and that sometimes clients left his office mad but he'd tell them when they didn't have grounds for a legit case and he didn't take their money and try some frivolous ****.

In relation to parents/education, one time (sixth grade) I got paddled (along with 3 others) for throwing spit balls and I hadn't thrown any. When I went home and told my dad, his response was, "Well, that's for all the other times you did things but didn't get caught". He didn't nearly come to school to bag on the teacher/prinicpal- he told me if I hung around with people who broke the rules I'd eventually be a rule-breaker too.

 

God bless your father with the cancer. Sounds like a guy who knows how to raise kids.

 

When I was 8 or 9 I got hurt pretty bad at day care. They had this old slide with bars that came out the sides & most of the bars had rubber stoppers on them to make them safer, but not all of them. We were playing tag, I was chasing some kid underneath this slide and didn't duck fast enough - my head slammed into the end of a metal pipe without a rubber part. An inch or two of my forehead was split open, i was unconscious on the ground bleeding everywhere. I woke up in the office with everybody around me & panicking, and of course didn't really know what was going on, but apparently they wouldn't call an ambulance until they got in touch with my mom which was like 15 minutes later. They refused to pay the medical costs & my mom threatened to sue. They never did pay us for the medical costs, but I ended up fine (still a slight scar on my forehead - that's about it) so my mom never sued.

Another time, leaving Albertsons, I tried to run between two trees on one of those little grass islands they have in the parkinglot, only to get closelined by a barbe-wire right to the eye. I had to wear a patch for a month (which of course I stopped doing the first day after the pirate remarks came about - I preferred walking around with one eye shut for an entire month), but Albertsons agreed to pay the medical costs this time.

I was an accident-prone child.

 

Sounds like you should give up running