| ▲ | EvanAnderson 5 hours ago | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Oh, god yes. I mowed using a Farmall H on a family farm when I was about 12 y/o. I don't remember ever having deadly serious conversations with family members up to that point in my life. All four grandparents, aunts and uncles-- it seemed like everybody-- sat me down, looked me dead in the eye, and told me sternly and bluntly "you turn off the PTO and see the shaft isn't turning before you get off the tractor. Every. Time." All of them knew somebody who lost an arm or leg or got killed when they got pulled into a PTO. That was probably the first time I'd ever been given the opportunity to operate a machine that would fucking kill me if I shirked on respecting it. I will never forget the tone of that communication. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | Ancapistani 3 hours ago | parent [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Without going too far into the weeds here, IMO this experience is representative of gun rights, zoning, and all sorts of other differences between urban and rural. Rural kids are put into situations where they are expected to rely fully on themselves, with life-or-death consequences, from a young age. When your pre-teen is driving a machine on their own that could easily kill them or those around them, giving them a .22 rifle is just... normal. It's not at all the same situation as a kid the same age who lives in an apartment and who may have never been in a place where no one would be close enough to hear them if they screamed for help. I can't wrap my head around the idea that a large number of people who live in cities seem to want to extend childhood through age 25. My daughters are 12 and 17, and between them have over fifty animals directly depending on them for survival. It's just... foreign. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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