'The Twenty.' by Cole Parker

[Camy]

Turning Twenty is a brand new short story by Cole Parker, written especially for the 20th anniversary of AwesomeDude.

I needn't say anything else - except I loved it... though I wouldn't have had the hutzpah Tanner showed at the end.

Read it, do!

[Cole Parker]

That one was fun to write.  I could just imagine me being Tanner.  Well, not, but I got to enjoy what he must have felt like.

Thanks, Camy.

C

[Bruin Fisher]

Go Tanner! Lovely story, Cole. I can still remember a little about being bullied at school. In my case I was small and the bullies were big, so a good punch in the face wasn't really an option for me. Maybe I could have tried a punch in the nuts...

[Cole Parker]

6 hours ago, Bruin Fisher said:

Go Tanner! Lovely story, Cole. I can still remember a little about being bullied at school. In my case I was small and the bullies were big, so a good punch in the face wasn't really an option for me. Maybe I could have tried a punch in the nuts...

Bullying remains a major problem in schools, with weaker and more timid boys getting the brunt of the physical attention.  Girls have more social and physchological affronts.  It's human nature, I suppose, to pick on the defenseless, especially when teenagers are involved.  No tolerance rules are set up to correct this, but they need to be enforced and frequently aren't.

[Joe Casey]

America, of course, elected a bully to be president eight years ago, a man whose actions nearly brought this country to its knees. Rather than giving him the punishment he richly deserves, we are--God help us--quite possibly on the verge of re-electing him. It's almost as if our society rewards that kind of behavior instead of trying to stamp it out. It makes me wonder just how much that kind of mentality seems to be baked into the American psyche; no wonder that far too many of our children are subject to it on a daily basis ... and that far too many of our children perpetuate that kind of behavior.

[Cole Parker]

Absolutely.  Why are peopel so fascinated by authoritarians and authoritarian rule?  That seems the way of the world now, not just here.  But here, where the vast majority enjoys prosperity, you'd think it would be different.  With Trump still commanding a large followership, there are too many who still want a despot to rule the land.

I don't get it, either.