Teenagers

Better stick to cats Orthos.

That's the plan!

my Daughter's first sentence was "Wait! i have an Idea!" when i was telling her not to do something, and it was a great idea! ever since then i've let things develop before i intervene:)
also my kids have always had a great sense of their identity, whenever anyone tells our son he looks like his mom or his dad or even his sister he gets really pissed and says "No! I'm Milo!" our daughter is the same way:)

Being from Miami means being from Florida and we all know what that means.

thats why there's the game "Germany or Florida?" ;)

Explain for those of us who don't know what that means, please.

Well Madison is nice and all but I wouldn't consider it a big city. Is that joint Sambas still around? Excellent food and a nice stage for Jazz music. That was about 6-7 years ago though since I have been out that way.

i... don't... know?

the Jazz and Stage sound nice tho, i'll look it up:)

There are times to lead by dictat and times to lead by example. At 14 and 19 I've never once had to chase my kids around or order them to behave in public. I'm polite and respectful to everyone I meet and so are they. Though sometimes they do need to get the eye to say thank you.

Explain for those of us who don't know what that means, please.

what you do is you grab a newspaper find a story about something f*%#ed up, crazy, etc. and then have the other person guess if it happened in Germany or Florida:) however Ohio is making a case to be included in the game:)

well put Simon my sentiment exactly!

also this thread is so fun i haven't even pestered the AP boards at all today:)

Orthos wrote:

Explain for those of us who don't know what that means, please.

what you do is you grab a newspaper find a story about something f+@#ed up, crazy, etc. and then have the other person guess if it happened in Germany or Florida:) however Ohio is making a case to be included in the game:)

I was responding to NPC, sorry.

i learned a very valuable lesson this week, if you give your family an extra half day to start Iron Gods you go from a party of alien conspiracy types (with a skeptical career drop out chelaxian noblewoman magus) to a party of 3 CN Androids with cheese catchphrases and The Dwarf (in our group theres always The Dwarf, since they found out they're great at carrying the luggage:)

And for the record, I can't wait for my kids to hit the Teens, its. been a treat watching them grow:)

You certainly don't get to fluff your feathers about salary and free time as some sort of measuring stick of how well you turned out. Take your salary and divide it by the lowest paid person working in your company (you can even adjust them to full time even though you probably only let them work 27 hours to prevent them from claiming benefits status) and if the answer is 50 or greater then you are a terrible person. I didn't make any assumptions about you before (because if you even said anything I didn't notice) but now that you have opened your mouth I'll feel free to draw conclusions about you based directly on your own words.

Ah, again with the generalizations. This time with pay and being terrible should you make some arbitrary ratio more than someone else? I'll say that is again rather general and certainly can't apply to everyone (Though I myself don't fit your category so might still not be terrible, at least by this measuring stick.) I fear the only correct conclusion you can draw is that I'm a bit of a troll. :) Oh, and that I often have a differing opinion than someone who categorically states 'If some arbitrary condition X exists you (or some other random person, parents etc.) are a terrible person.' I've never seen a good formula for finding terrible people and doubt this is it.

I don't think you are a terrible person, though perhaps someone with whom I occasionally disagree. I'd say you do have strong opinions, or at the very least a strong way of expressing them.

Oh, as a side note, I don't have nearly the free time you perhaps have assumed. I just give up sleep for Pathfinder. :) This post does have me thinking Tengu for some reason...

In closing, I took no offense at all at your statements towards me. I just disagree that parents, in general, are bad if they allow their children privacy or permit them to do "bad" things and learn from the experience. Even in that, perhaps I have misread and that isn't your position at all. If so, I'm sorry I chose you as the person with whom I disagreed.

BigDTBone wrote:

You certainly don't get to fluff your feathers about salary and free time as some sort of measuring stick of how well you turned out. Take your salary and divide it by the lowest paid person working in your company (you can even adjust them to full time even though you probably only let them work 27 hours to prevent them from claiming benefits status) and if the answer is 50 or greater then you are a terrible person. I didn't make any assumptions about you before (because if you even said anything I didn't notice) but now that you have opened your mouth I'll feel free to draw conclusions about you based directly on your own words.

Ah, again with the generalizations. This time with pay and being terrible should you make some arbitrary ratio more than someone else? I'll say that is again rather general and certainly can't apply to everyone (Though I myself don't fit your category so might still not be terrible, at least by this measuring stick.) I fear the only correct conclusion you can draw is that I'm a bit of a troll. :) Oh, and that I often have a differing opinion than someone who categorically states 'If some arbitrary condition X exists you (or some other random person, parents etc.) are a terrible person.' I've never seen a good formula for finding terrible people and doubt this is it.

I don't think you are a terrible person, though perhaps someone with whom I occasionally disagree. I'd say you do have strong opinions, or at the very least a strong way of expressing them.

Oh, as a side note, I don't have nearly the free time you perhaps have assumed. I just give up sleep for Pathfinder. :) This post does have me thinking Tengu for some reason...

In closing, I took no offense at all at your statements towards me. I just disagree that parents, in general, are bad if they allow their children privacy or permit them to do "bad" things and learn from the experience. Even in that, perhaps I have misread and that isn't your position at all. If so, I'm sorry I chose you...

You were the one who brought up "I'm an executive at a fortune 500 company. I make a fine salary" as evidence of how well you turned out.

I don't know anything about you personally, but I don't that kind of success as proof of anything much. There are some really horrible people who make an awful lot of money.

You were the one who brought up "I'm an executive at a fortune 500 company. I make a fine salary" as evidence of how well you turned out.

I don't know anything about you personally, but I don't that kind of success as proof of anything much. There are some really horrible people who make an awful lot of money.

Now there is a statement to which I entirely agree. I may have chosen poorly in my examples of things to show that I turned out ok. In truth you are correct in that there isn't much I could say to show I'm a good person. Most of the anecdotal, I'm a good person statements here mean little. I suppose you could take, "I have no police record" to mean "I'm really good at being evil." Or even, "I've never done X." to mean "I'm pretty good at lying". I suppose that we will just have to assume that those who say they turned out ok did so. This is the internet after all.

As an aside, I didn't mean to imply I was rich, just that I've grown to no longer be a burden on my parents. Something I think many parents want their children to accomplish and as such something that could be measured as "success" in raising a child. I'm sure there are many such expectations that could be listed, and we could have a checklist and a score for how we each turned out. :)

A more interesting topic though might be; How much of that was the parent's doing, and how much of it the child's?

We also didn't have cops on campus, didn't allow weapons in the school building but several kids would keep hunting guns and knives in their cars, and had a graduating class under 200. So in addition to everything else, the fact that I grew up in a tiny town probably has a lot to do with my experiences.

Unless South-Central Texas is drastically different than North Texas, I'd have to just say that your town is an anomaly. I'm from Venus, a town at the south end of the D/FW Metroplex. At the time I graduated in 2003 the town population was 1800, and our graduating class was 114 students. We didn't have on-school smoking sections, and smoking or drinking on campus was a big no-no, but if you were caught with either the worst thing you were gonna get was ISS and your parents called. Drugs would result in the cops getting called and being suspended, but no being expelled unless it was a repeat offence. Teen pregnancy was sadly common. I believe there were at least 6 girls in my class who had kids before graduating, and I'm pretty sure there were a couple who were pregnant at graduation. At any given time, there were at least half a dozen kids in the school who were pregnant. I know our school was a little worse than the surrounding area for pregnancy, but not by much.

Cpt. Yesterday is right R. Orthos. Florida generally has a high enough concentration of crazy and/or stupid or at least enough to make the news about it and gain a reputation.

NobodysHome wrote:

over 95% of U.S. teens explore alcohol, a nearly-as-high percentage explore sex

Woo~! *proud 5%er*

that's a pretty weird thing to be proud of

I'm a teeen btw and I think a lot of people who don't like teenagers are reminded that they didn't make the most of their youth and feel kind of irrelevant. there's for sure a lot of dumb asses but you get them at all ages I think. put things in perspective ppl

Orthos wrote:

NobodysHome wrote:

over 95% of U.S. teens explore alcohol, a nearly-as-high percentage explore sex

Woo~! *proud 5%er*

that's a pretty weird thing to be proud of

I would disagree. But that's probably because I am one of the 5%. It makes sense that the 95% wouldn't see it as something to be proud of.

I'm a teeen btw and I think a lot of people who don't like teenagers are reminded that they didn't make the most of their youth and feel kind of irrelevant.

Or we're just reminded "Man I wasn't that bad when I was that age was I? Thank God I grew out of that." I get that about two or three times a year nowadays >_>

oh you're f&~+ing with me

Orthos wrote:

We also didn't have cops on campus, didn't allow weapons in the school building but several kids would keep hunting guns and knives in their cars, and had a graduating class under 200. So in addition to everything else, the fact that I grew up in a tiny town probably has a lot to do with my experiences.

Unless South-Central Texas is drastically different than North Texas, I'd have to just say that your town is an anomaly. *snip*

This makes me immensely proud of my hometown, yet otherwise puts me in a really depressed mood.

I think that's enough forums for today.

oh you're f~~&ing with me

How so?

you didn't say why you were proud of not doing stuff as a kid, you just said that you were part of a smaller group so I thought you were being ironically an elitist. also I never said that I was part of the 95% smart guy

Ah. I've never gotten the allure of the whole "doing it ironically" thing.

Nah, I do consider it a good thing that I avoided those particular temptations and the hassles and complications they bring.

that's fair enough but when you divide people who did drugs and people who didn't it's like you're making people who do drugs into different groups where one is right and one is wrong then maybe that kind of treatment is part of what makes drugs such a problem in our society. maybe I'm making too big a deal out of this but my cousin is locked up in atlanta because of drugs and he's a good person. the game is all f~~*ed up wrt drugs I think ._.

Well we'll have to agree to disagree.

Are you two seriously ganging up on Orthos over this?
we were having a nice relevatory conversation on our different perspectives due to our upbringing, keep the noise and negativity in the rules forum:)

I don't really wanna talk about drugs anyway. ontopic @all: what do you think is different about being a teen now compared to whenever you were a teen

I would disagree. But that's probably because I am one of the 5%. It makes sense that the 95% wouldn't see it as something to be proud of.

I agree to a point. We should take pride in our choices, and other people shouldn't be upset by that pride. I'm happy with my choice not to drink until I was 21, and in my choice to be straightedge. Some people just take it further than I do.

Are you two seriously ganging up on Orthos over this?

we were having a nice relevatory conversation on our different perspectives due to our upbringing, keep the noise and negativity in the rules forum:)

Nah not really a ganging up, just me just getting home and replying to a bunch of comments at once and being too lazy to use the edit button.

I don't think that you should be unconditionally proud of stuff you've done (not necessarily this thing) because everybody f$$+s up and part of growing up is recognizing how you suck and how you have sucked and combating that I think

keep the noise and negativity in the rules forum:)

I'd rather keep it out of the forums completely. Hey, I can dream, right?

I don't think that you should be unconditionally proud of stuff you've done (not necessarily this thing) because everybody f+!&s up and part of growing up is recognizing how you suck and how you have sucked and combating that I think

While true in the basic extent, if in the long run you feel the decision was a good one, I don't see any problem with being proud that you made it, especially if you did so in the face of significant peer/societal pressure/expectation to do otherwise.

I'm not talking about you dude

I think it still applies though.

how does what you say even contradict what I said tho? it seems like something aimed at 'you shouldn't be proud of not doing drugs' when I was saying 'it's kind of a major personality flaw to be proud of all of your choices. you could apply that to some really messed up stuff and reinforce it all'

It wasn't a contradiction (unlike this statement, which is a contradiction), but rather a qualification of your assertion. Effectively noting nuance instead of absolutism - a nuance that, perhaps, felt unnecessary from your perspective, but felt important enough fir Orthos to remind others of nonetheless.

Let me put it this way:

1) being proud of every decision you've made is stupid (because people make mistakes)

2) being proud of not making bad decisions is great (because good decisions are good)

These are non-contradictory statements, and they both function as accurate addendum a to each other.

This is what the two of you have been saying, I think.

EDIT: for formatting

Orthos wrote:

NobodysHome wrote:

over 95% of U.S. teens explore alcohol, a nearly-as-high percentage explore sex

Woo~! *proud 5%er*

that's a pretty weird thing to be proud of

It's not "weird" in the sense that it's "incorrect, mentally" (which is the most common inference of "weird"), but it may well be "weird" in the sense of "uncommon" if, in fact, the percentages hold true.

Incidentally, Nobody'sHome, I'm in both 5% brackets. Something I'm immensely happy about.

are you on the autistic spectrum?

Straight Edge: The Musical Interlude

are you on the autistic spectrum?

Not to the best of my knowledge. Certainly pedantic, though. Also Attention Deficit and Dyslexic. Fun times! Are you?

To clarify, I've run into enough confusion on the internet about most everything and have seen all sorts of irritation, frustration, and other similar emotional issues crop up due to this failure of communication, intent, or cultural difference as a result.

Hence, I've taken it on as a personal thing to explain things to people in the hopes of furthering communication, hopefully with individuals I'm engaging with being wise enough to take the cues given and rein in their otherwise antisocial behavior, or recognize the cultural differentiation and accept that other view things different from themselves, thus becoming better folk, and more enjoyable to be around over-all.

Nice new avatar, by the way.

EDIT: to fix reign to rein, at Big Justin's suggestion.

I hate to be the one to tell you this buddy but you typed 'reign in their otherwise antisocial behavior' when I think you meant 'rein in their otherwise antisocial behavior'

You are correct! As previously noted, I am, in fact, dyslexic. There are a number of cases in which I substitute similar words as a result. Thanks.

I'm glad to see your grammar improving, though. That's nice, too. :)

it's called code-switching pops

"Code-switching" heh. I just thought you had poor grammar. So you're ESL or multi-lingual?

Also, I am not your "pops" - neither the cereal or the colloquialistoc expression of male patronage. If, on the other hand, your using the colloquialistoc expression of advanced age, thanks!

you seem kinda smug for somebody who I don't think knows that code-switching can occur monolingually