Waski_the_Squirrel said:
This is a lesson to parents everywhere: teach your kids from a young age how to stand up for what is right and to not follow the herd...and still don't be surprised if they do something stupid.
True. When I was a kid, our parents DRILLED this into us. DRILLED, I say. This was in the days before cell phones, so when I left to go anywhere, they always made sure I had a quarter so I could call them to come get me if need be. Their thing was just call us and we'll come get you no questions asked.
So, being the goodie-two-shoes I am, I ran with a pretty mild crowd. Some of them probably drank when I wasn't around, but mostly just cruised around town and hung out at the mall. One night, they got the bright idea to crash the homecoming dance of the worst school in the county. Really wild school. I know crashing a dance isn't the worst thing in the world, but I had a REALLY bad feeling about it. We were sitting at McDonald's, and when they got up to leave, I stayed seated and told them I wasn't going. They thought I was crazy, of course, and said you don't have a ride home. I said, "I'll call my parents to come get me, and I won't say a word about where anybody else went." They huffed and they puffed and they fumed and begged, but I knew I wasn't about to go. Looking back, on the surface, it doesn't look that bad, but SOMETHING inside me said DON'T GO, so who knows what would have happened. Anyhoo, they all decided to go home as well, so we drove home with them in a major huff. Too bad, so sad.
I've had to do that as an adult, too, and with very nice people. They weren't talking about criminal behavior; just a couple of situations where something was clearly wrong (clear to me, anyway), but they were plunging headlong. I held firm on both, thank the Lord, so I don't know what the consequences would have been.
I do know this one thing, though - if I'd been part of a group causing $40K felony damage to my school, I'd have paid every cent of my part back if it took till I was 35. My parents would have gotten me a good lawyer, but they would NOT have said get her off no matter what. :sigh: