Across the board age discrimination doesn't really work.
I have dealt with 20 year-olds who really should not be left out on their own overnight. I have negotiated traffic stops with physically healthy 43 year-olds who should not be allowed to drive on their own, and never should be allowed access to anything more dangerous than a hacksaw or a pea-shooter. I have met 12 year-olds that I think should be granted status as adults for the felonies that I have seen them brazenly commit. I have met 11 year-olds that I would have no problem with, if they went on a trip overnight in rough territory, or kept a house by themselves, armed at all times.
Some human beings are simply more capable than others. Some are capable to a completely satisfactory adult level, long before their birthdate has reached magic numbers of, say "18" or "21" or the like.
Somewhere out in the Indian Ocean is a 16 year old young lady named Abby Sunderland, who had displayed enough drive and ability that she was given a shot to pilot a sailboat on a voyage around the world. It now looks possible that she's not going to live through that voyage, due to inclement weather. ** Such single-person sailing expeditions can be dangerous. It happens.
But teenagers die on their way to school in their cars, and they perish in odd accidents that you wouldn't have expected. And they die at home. None of us gets out of this life alive.
But, for a time, she was captain of her own vessel, and completely in charge of her own destiny. Not a lot of 16 year-olds can say that. Probably most aren't ready to do so. But she and some other people evidently thought that she was ready, and she tried to live just a little bit more than most of us do.
I can't make myself judge her parents for that. They know if she was ready.*
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*Insofar as the costs of the rescue efforts go, I firmly believe that is between her family and the Australian rescue groups. That absolutely must have been considered before such an endeavor was attempted.
**EDIT: Turns out that she's fine.
posted by Matt G @ 5:31 PM
3 Comments:
Good news posted to her blog. Australian Search and Rescue was able to establish radio contact with Abby. She lost her rigging, but is alive and well.
http://soloround.blogspot.com/2010/06/abby-is-fine.html
Matt, people like her have a drive that is just NOT understandable to most people. Sadly, people like her also force military/rescue people to have to rescue them when their ego over-rides common practice and common sense (e,g, punching into a tropical cyclone; when pulling into port would have been the sensible choice)...
My father, a sailor, and I were discussing this last night, and he wondered if she just did not have the physical strength to re-step the mast. We forget how much muscle power is required to sail a small craft, and that may have been her undoing as much as a storm was.
LittleRed1
wv:asessef - what the rescuers are going to do to her family for the cost of rescuing the young lady.
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