When a friend of mine was a little kid, someone drove past, jumped out of their car, and ran over and grabbed him trying to kidnap him.
He was just confused about what the guy was even doing, but grabbed onto a chain-link fence and wouldn’t let go, so the guy was yanking him and yelling at him to let go, but he was able to hold on. Eventually the guy gave up and ran back and sped away. While he was being yanked on the fence, he was worried because the ball he’d been playing with was rolling down the hill, and he was worried it would go somewhere he wouldn’t be able to find it and he would lose his ball.
When the guy left, he went and retrieved his ball, psyched that he was able to get it back. He thought no more about it and kept playing, and then later that day told his mom about what happened.
She lost her mind. For some reason, he thought she had also been worried about the ball, and he kept telling her he’d been able to get it back after, so it was all good.
I can’t find the statistic any more, but it was something like 80% of people who are kidnapped and are taken in the kidnapper’s car are killed. Like this kid’s situation, fight, scream, do everything possible to not be taken.
This is what I do every time and it always works
Wait, what do you mean every time?
They’re so fun to try and kidnap, I’ve given it a burl a few times, they gotta fucking tight grip tho, never been able to get em loose.
You mean killing the person you’ve just snatched into your car right?
Works like a charm
Was his parents separated? Most likely it would be dad with a restraining order or some other family trying to “get him back”.
When I was 13 I helped the local burnout mow lawns. He was late 20’s and hung out with us teenagers from the same block. Got us weed, bought us beer. The 16yo guys I looked up to were friends (?) with him, he’d hang in the backyard fort of the lead 16yo, and he basically ran the local lawn mowing cartel of all us kids. I wanted money and it was easy and fun, hangin’ with the boys. We shoveled walks in the winter.
One snowstorm morning he wasn’t at the fort where we’d meet so I volunteered to run across the street to his house. Knock. Knock loud. Try the door, he didn’t mind if we came in his basement entrance to his parent’s house. It’s dark, light on in the bathroom. 13yo me saw his first dead body that day; full bathtub with slit wrists and neck.
E: oh, reason for suicide seemed to be that he had a DUI wreck a couple months prior where a young girl (like 7 or 8) didn’t die but wouldn’t ever be the same… like couldn’t walk or brain damage or something. He couldn’t handle what he did, I guess.
Damn. You understood the assignment. Also, I was sure that story was going somewhere else horrifying.
What is a DUI wreck? Car accident and fleeing?
Driving under the influence [of alcohol or other] and crashing I believe
Driving under the influence. He was drunk and hit someone’s car. I don’t think there was any fleeing involved, he had broken bones and shit. Spent time in jail and was waiting on his trial out on bond.
I spent a year as a videographer for a local news station. Do not work such jobs if you don’t want to see dead bodies because, as I found out, you’re literally an ambulance chaser. One of the many reasons I only worked there for a year. And probably why I am now too squeamish to watch gory movies.
I’m just glad I’ve never seen anyone actually die. At least not yet.
I’m, in fact, not a horse. I only pretend to be one on the Internet.
Nice try Ed.
Wow. How fucking dare you? I trusted you.
This is America, 1971
I happen to own this shirt and have worn it to a couple of IRL meetups:
Here’s mine (sorry it took so long, I’m shy)
I approve!
Because you’re a jackass? rimshot
When I was a kid (18?), one night a friend of my friend called us to come give this drunken girl a ride. They said they were at a party and the guy took some time to babysit her and take her home but he couldn’t handle her anymore.
We went and picked her up and were going to take her wherever in the area she wanted to go as a solid for this guy. She got in the car and started berating us and trying to turn up the volume and complaining about the music. She said she had sucked dick and whatever other mess and wasn’t going to put up with our shit this evening. She was much more intoxicated than I thought she would be. She requested to be taken to her car and she started giving us directions. She said she was going to sleep it off in the car so her parents wouldn’t know. We planned to take her keys and come back later or something. We were honestly blindsided by how ridiculous everything got so quickly.
Turns out her car was parked at a local recycling center or something and when we pulled in there, there was a brand new Cadillac, lights came on car started. She said it was probably her grandpa. We let her out and started driving away so that they could figure it out, we wanted to be done. Grandpa didn’t even stop to let her in the car or get her in her own car or anything. He immediately started following us. He tailgated us all the way down the highway back to my friend’s house with his brights on. We drove normally but tried to concoct a plan. We pulled up the driveway at my friend’s place about 15 minutes later and he stops short a few car lengths into the driveway.
I kind of lost it at that point and walked down the driveway to ask him what the hell he was thinking and he steps out of the car standing behind the driver side door. As I come up to him to give him a piece of my mind he raises his hands and he has a pistol pointed right at me. I guess being young and full of adrenaline I absolutely went off on him yelling what the hell did he think he was doing pulling a gun on this we were just trying to give his granddaughter a ride we didn’t even really know her. I mean I got right up in his face. I can’t believe I did that in retrospect, I would never do that now. After I yelled at him he dropped his hands and looked confused. Said “What was I supposed to do?” I’ll never forget those words.He quickly got in his car and started to turn around. I tried to block his car so I could call the police but as I started to get on the phone he punched it and ran over my foot. Thankfully I moved to just enough to the side that it didn’t really do anything. Cops showed up later and the officer stood around for a while talking to us and getting statements. He said that we have to go down to the magistrate downtown to do anything about this.
We went there and the magistrate asked us a bunch of the same questions. He did some paperwork stuff and essentially concluded that the guy who pulled a gun on me had already come by and filed a report that we were threatening him and that the two conflicting statements would cancel each other out - nothing would happen to either of us. Come to find out later on that the man who pulled a gun on me was a retired police chief from the area, very well known, who owned a local car wash. He had a sketchy past and I guess this was just another day in the life of a police officer abusing power.
I look back and think what the hell was that girl doing? Was she actually being taking advantage of? Did the friend of a friend know that would happen so he set us up to take the fall for it? Was he the abuser? Was she just being sloppy and shitty and he didn’t want to get in trouble? How in the world did those things cancel each other out especially with no investigation into it. They couldn’t have. I’ll never forget that. I never talked to that idiot friend of a friend again and I never saw police officers the same either.
I’m aware your questions are rhetorical, but I’m going to answer them anyway. Your questions are just so spot on.
Was she actually being taking advantage of?
80/20
Did the friend of a friend know that would happen so he set us up to take the fall for it?
Maybe. It doesn’t have to be that Machiavellian. Maybe he didn’t know what to do and was just looking for an out. Not an excuse. Could be similar feelings whether he’s the abuser or relatively innocent.
How in the world did those things cancel each other out especially with no investigation into it.
Cops don’t like paperwork. Paperwork can mean accountability. If nothing’s written, they can’t get lectured for doing it wrong.
I half expected this to end with jumper cables. Quite a ride, though.
Nothing personal, kid. Alternator’s out.
Not ever having closure for shit like this is ridiculously frustrating. This drunk lady came to my door once and lied that she was a friend of a friend but she was really upset and may possibly have been hit by her boyfriend because she had a big red mark on her cheek and started crying about him. So I had her call her mother to pick her up. Then my wife came home and we hid in the bedroom with the door closed while she and her mom had a huge yelling match about the boyfriend. Eventually they left and we never saw or heard from them again.
You’d think they would have at least left a thank you note.
I have scars around and on my genitals. When I was young my mom told me that I had surgery just after I was born. Now as an adult, I think I may have been born with some sort of intersex condition but I am afraid to talk to my parents about it.
I…what the fuck! Exact same with me, and I’ve always kinda felt like I’m stuck between sexes.
I just never thought about this possibility…Might want to get hormonal blood work done. Are you female? You could have androgen insensitivity syndrome or something.
If your an adult you should be able to get your medical records. This is a pain in the ass with lots of hoops to jump through but you own the data.
Probably not, from someone who worked in pediatric urology and endocrinology. They don’t tend to do surgery until you are older because you need to be old enough to determine what your gender identity is very clearly, which is not clear sometimes with intersex conditions. It’s a really bad decision to make too early. Probably what you had was an undescended testicle or hydrocele or something.
They don’t tend to do surgery until you are older
Yeah, today. But not 40 years ago.
It’s a really bad decision to make too early.
You say that like parents wouldn’t make the decision and find a doctor to do it.
No haha. Did you read the book about the boy whose penis was burned off so the infamous Dr John Money told them to make him into a girl. They did and it was terrible.
haha?
Yeah that happened about the same time as OP’s story
Were the standards any different in the 80s? I’ve heard stories of people getting “corrective surgery” in infancy but the cases that I’ve heard are not from the US or are much older.
Outside of North America maybe, that I don’t know. But in North America they tell the parents they won’t know the gender for a while, to name and dress and groom the child as the parents choose, but they let them know it might change. It’s so rare though, I’ve seen one case in 20 years of hospital work.
Human Rights Watch was pretty concerned about prematurely assigning gender to intersex children, back in 2017. I expect there’s more regional variation in this than you’d think.
Yeah, I have a feeling here in Indiana, they tend not to tell the parents that they won’t know the gender for a while.
I would not want to try and explain “intersex” to some of my high school classmates (or my brother TBH). “You mean my kid was born a slur?”
Maybe Kentucky has changed in the past few decades, but I doubt it.
That was a really hard won battle for the intersex community. I’m 30 and if my intersex condition had been caught at birth (it was very minor and hidden by foreskin), I’m pretty sure they’d’ve moved from pressuring my mom to circumcise to pressuring her to “fix” it.
I (aurally) witnessed a kindergartener get run over by her school bus. I was on a different bus and our bus drivers were talking over the radio, then there was this ungodly wailing from the other bus. The other bus driver just kept screaming “I killed her, I killed her”.
Turns out the little girl barely missed the bus, ran alongside it to catch up, tripped, and fell under the wheels of the bus.
Once we got to high school, students on the killing bus were offered counseling. I, not being on the killing bus, didn’t talk to anyone about it until I went to therapy decades later.
Yellow school buses freak me out still, for that and abuse reasons.
Omigod that’s awful.
Yeah, there’s also the confusion of not having literally seen or felt the kid being crushed, so chastising myself that it shouldn’t have been that traumatic. It took me years to accept that just hearing something can also be witnessing it.
My bus hit some poor unhoused guy last year. That was a terrible thump. Thankfully all he got was a head laceration.
