I had some good conversations in my last post about the city-wide curfew for teens in Fayetteville, North Carolina and in the comments a lot of what was being discussed ended up being about good parenting. I want to talk about that a bit more because while I had an absolutely stellar upbringing, I have no children of my own.
My parents were rednecks and so am I. The word "redneck" doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing and me and my family accept the label with a certain sense of pride. To us, redneck means people that aren't overly concerned with latest trends, appreciate simple things like the outdoors, tend to think in a conservative fashion, have no desire to be in metro areas or live like that, and we also have a very strong family bond.
Speaking of family bonds, there were a lot of times in my life that I got into a bit of mischief, but my parents had a very good approach to "sortin' me out" after the fact. Here is one instance that I remember very well as a kid of about 12 or 13 years old.
our story ends at Roses, which if you have ever heard of Roses you might be a bit of a redneck yourself! But that is not where our story begins. Our story begins with an RC car that I was so proud of that I built myself and this thing was one of my favorite kind of grown up toys that I had as a child.
The "Lunch Box" monster truck is an RC vehicle of pretty great power. It is more than a toy because the speeds this thing can get up to is enough to hurt you. It can go around 30 mph or so and is not your run-of-the-mill toy. It also requires careful assembly, maintenance, and some learning about electrical operations, so for a redneck family, this thing was ideal to get a kid interested in more adult topics. I learned about gears, lubrication of bearings, wheel alignment, the importance of shocks/struts, as well as deterioration of rechargeable batteries and how to extend their life and the charge they can hold by building my own dischargers using soldering guns.
It really was a wild time and I was seriously into it and would mess with the RC truck in a great deal of my free time.
The problem with this thing wasn't the truck itself, but in the remote required to operate it.
While these things are probably all digital today in my day they were analog. The steering wheel controlled a remote servo on the front that would turn the wheels, and the trigger would turn a servo left-to-right to engage the throttle. It was important to keep these well lubricated as well because a servo that got stuck in a certain position, especially the throttle, would result in a crash.
The problem with these things wasn't the technology. The problem was that for operation this thing required 8 AA batteries. As the power dwindles in your batteries, the range would get really poor and sometimes your truck would lose signal half a mile away from you down the road... and that was not fun. Therefore, my hobby requires a lot of AA batteries and rechargeable ones were out of the question because at that point in time rechargeable batteries sucked ass and lithium wasn't yet discovered as a battery source as far as I know.
I had a job, but I was 12, so this job didn't pay very well and in order to continue doing my favorite hobby, the cost of the batteries alone were eating up all of my pocket money and the most important thing at the time to me was that by spending money on new Engergizers I was unable to get the parts for the truck that I wanted and was eyeing up in the hobby store.
So, what does a 12 year old do in that situation? Well, unfortunately for me, it was shoplifting.
I don't know what battery packs are like these days but back in the late 80s 8-packs could be opened in a flash. So I would go into the supermarket, get an 8-pack of batteries, reach inside of an aisle shelf like I was looking at some hanging candy and dismantle the packaging like a professional dropping the batteries into my hand. I would leave the packaging behind and put the batteries into my pocket and then on the way out buy a soda and some candy as to not rouse any suspicion. This worked a rather long time but it hadn't occurred to my pea brain that eventually shelf stockers are going to notice the empty packs of batteries on the shelf and maybe review the CCTV footage.
Well one day at Roses, I was pulling my usual heist when right after doing what I thought was another successful pull when a skinny guy wearing street clothes walked up to me with a security badge and told me to empty out my pockets. Dead to rights I did as he said and was escorted to an office in the back where I was interrogated and probably cried. This was in the back room of the Roses store featured in the first picture. I can still see that skinny and unshaved dude who was their undercover security in my mind now. He really did a good job with his disguise as I had seen him in the aisle before that and never for a minute did I suspect him of being security staff.
src
these days batteries come in very difficult to open packaging that normally requires tools to open and are too big to fit in your pockets. I take no pride in realizing that I am part of the reason why this change happened
I was presented with two options: Give them my parents' phone number or they would call the police. We still respected police back then so I turned over my home phone number. But let me tell you, I was actually a lot more afraid of what was going to happen when my mom got there than what the police were going to do.
My parents were not the beating type. I only recall a couple of times where anything physical happened between us and it was regimented, not out of control. They were not abusive. What my parents did have though, was a tremendous method of guilt-tripping their kids into actin' right. We grew up in such as way that having your parents be proud of your accomplishments was one of the highest honors that we could have. My parents grounded me of course, but what really hurt wasn't losing my freedom and being required to come straight back after school, it was the fact that I was treated with shame for a while after that incident. I don't remember how long I was under house arrest, but it was for a while.
They never lectured me about the virtues of not shoplifting, they didn't have to. In that time they still treated me nicely, but it was evident that they were punishing me by not being as nice as they had been in the past. I don't know if this was a joint strategy but it would be quite some time before things went back to normal and I would be let out of the house with some freedom again. I never would have dreamed of sneaking out because that would have made it even worse for me. They would know... my parents were not dummies.
When I did finally get my "ticket of leave" I never once considered shoplifting ever again. It was extremely effective their punishment and oversight of my life and while shoplifting a couple packs of batteries is not that big of a deal, getting away with it I will admit, kind of encouraged me at the time to aim higher for more big ticket items. I never made it to that point though and most of this is because of the fact that my parents were very good at discipline without physicality.
I am so thankful that I had good parents and I still live somewhat near them to this day (this is one aspect of redneckdom that will never change.) There are a lot of other times that through their upbringing that I became the man I am today and me and my siblings are all pretty well-rounded and reasonably successful law-abiding members of society.
I think back to that day at Roses and wonder what it would be like if my mom had just given me a pop on the back of the head and said "don't go to Roses anymore" and then let me right back out of the house: I would have learned nothing! Because of them I learned very well the consequences of my actions and ended up, for the most part, actin' right because of the family unit. I don't think that I would have made correct decisions on my own as a kid without their guidance and despite having no children myself, this is part of the reason why I think it is so important that parents be extremely involved in their kids' lives.