They grasp the knot where the laces are tied, whirl them like an ancient slingshot, and release at exactly the right moment.
This seems to be a ‘thing’, don’t know why people do that.
Making it as difficult as possible to toss bricks off overpasses is the right thing to do. The kids aren’t old enough or experienced enough at life to put possible death together with what they are doing. It seems like no one could miss the connection at our age, but they haven’t grown up enough yet. Minors certainly need to pay a penalty for killing someone, but maybe not as much as an adult should pay.
In a desolate part of my state there is a tree next to the highway filled with dozens of pairs. Flinging the shoes up there has been a high school senior graduation tradition for decades. My class of 1970 on the other side of the state was 620. The tree would have been far to small for that one year. My wife graduated from the school (which is 50 miles from the tree) with the tradition in 1969. Her class of 16 Included 1 German exchange student! All 16 including the German lady attended the 20 year reunion. 14 only had to drive a few miles as they fulfilled another local tradition, Staying on the family farm. That is the only “why” I am aware of.
There was a case about 10 or 12 years ago where a group of kids removed a stop sign in order to get a souvenir to display in someone’s bedroom.
Yes, you guess it.
A car was T-boned as a result of the missing stop sign and the driver was killed.
IIRC, the teens got pretty stiff sentences for this “simple” theft that turned into a death sentence for an innocent person. I don’t recall the state where this happened, but I remember thinking that this was the type of teenage “prank” that could happen almost anywhere.
They should get severe sentences, just not as severe as adults should get for the same crime.
Ah I see. Like David and Goliath huh? Still that’s a long way to throw tennis shoes.
I dunno though. We did stuff as kids but never did anything to endanger anyone. Maybe require a car wash but not a hospital. I can’t believe we were any smarter back then. Had guns all over the place too and never shot at anyone or even pointed it at anyone. Safety on etc. Just like taught in class. I suspect as I’ve said before that it is a matter of that creeping line of what has become acceptable or more like possible behavior. The line gets crossed by some freak and it then becomes a new line of behavior for the people on the edge. I know people went nuts back then but usually ended up in their own demise instead of others. Where’s my psychologist neighbor when I need him?
…or not…
Honorably-discharged veteran Howard Unruh’s most memorable quotation was, “I’d have killed a thousand if I had enough bullets”.
Yeah but that was New Jersey 
Not saying it didn’t happen but I think the mores of what is acceptable/possible behavior has shifted lower. Yeah we had the Canfield shootings too but no one except my sister thought they were anything but detestable. It was not acceptable to murder police.
So…that type of event of 68 years ago couldn’t (and hasn’t) happened anywhere else in The US since then?
From what source have you derived your news over the past 60+ years?
Trust me…mores have not really changed to any major extent over the ensuing decades.
I have to somewhat reluctantly agree. When I grew up in the modern Jurassic period (1950s/1960s) most children knew right from wrong and the concept of death at the age of about 6 years. With todays video games where being “killed” lasts for a few seconds the concept could be very different. In today’s society it seems that vehicles are considered objects without concern for the actual humans inside.
At nearly every ski resort I have skied at, there is usually one tree next to one of the main lifts that’s covered with Mardi Gras beads and other stuff that people throw at it while riding the lift.
I agree. It does seem that adolescents these days are growing older without growing up. And the video games and movies do seem to be involved to a great degree. Cable television these days offers re-runs from the earliest days and it occurred to me recently that the few programs that I watched on a somewhat regular basis as a child were outrageously bland morality plays. From Gunsmoke to the Rifleman killing was never a gory scene and most deaths were made to seem regrettable in the plot. And speaking of cars, if anyone remembers Route 66 they recall that it was somewhat of a 20th century sentimentalized Proverbs.
I remember Nelson Riddles jazzy theme song.
More and more it seems we have had near identical childhoods about a continent apart that still influence our adult lives. I was talked into by peers of a couple of harmless pranks but drew the line at vandalism. Speaking of guns I saved $2. With my parent’s permission I purchased a Daisy Cub BB gun when I was 8 years old, If I had even pointed it at someone it would have been in pieces in the garbage can. For my 12th birthday I received a Remington .22 bolt action rifle. My Father taught me everything concerning gun safety. I could throw the rifle with bolt open across the handlebars of my bicycle and ride about 2 miles to the river and target shoot. I would ride through the center of my small town past the elementary school and stop at a corner store to buy ammunition, No one blinked an eye. At the age of 13 I completed The NRA hunter safety course which was just a refresher of what my Father taught me. Back then for some reason people shooting people where I lived was virtually unheard of.
Every old codger I know thinks that. Every old codger I knew 30 years ago thought that too.
The only thing that has changed is your perspective. There are still good kids and bad kids.
It’s a lot easier to be pessimistic when you let the news media shape your personal bubble.
It’s a lot easier to be optimistic when you work with bright young college students.
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@Whitey I hope you’re right but somehow I think some of us old codgers are more able to see the clear trends over time. I think @sgtrock21 brings up a good point about what kids are exposed to now compared to the 50’s and 60’s. What we watched were programs like Sky King, Roy Rogers, Sea Hunt, Andy Griffith, 26 Men, Highway Patrol, West Point, and on and on and on. Most if not all had real lessons and good and bad comparisons. You have to remember the writers and producers of those shows are mostly dead now and replaced by a new generation of . . .check the news for the folks in Hollywood coming up with this garbage.
I often wonder if things look worse than they are because the news puts the blood and guts on 15 minute re-runs. But we each must make our own conclusions from the media, news and entertainment, and personal observations and experiences. And it does appear that there has been a shift in the fundamental thinking regarding what I consider ‘gore’ and the seeming acceptance by many younger than me. But this issue could quickly slip over the edge of acceptable public discourse so maybe I’ll just say that the “Route 66” theme music was good and good night.
Silly me but when I watched Route 66 I wondered things like, where did they get the money to buy the car in the first place, and did they buy it together 50-50? Where did they get their mail? How did they pay for things like insurance? How did they pay their taxes? Renew their drivers license, and stuff like that. Life on the road without an anchor is not easy.
So you blame television writers for making characters interesting as the cause of our national moral degradation? Yes, today’s fictional heroes have flaws, and villains sometimes do nice things, just like real life has always been.
I’ve tried watching the shows you mention and they don’t stand the test of time. The characters are boring and one dimensional and the stories have predictable endings.
If the price of imagined national moral degradation is boring entertainment, I will take a pass. You might like living in Mayberry, but I prefer the real world.