[HPforGrownups] Re: Prank

[Rebecca Stephens]

No: HPFGUIDX 80138


--- Richard <darkmatter30 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com,
> "sylviablundell2001" 
> <sylviablundell at a...> wrote:
> > I'm getting increasingly worried about the use of
> this 
> word "prank". 
> > It has such a light-hearted sound about it. My
> dictionary defines 
> it 
> > as "a sportive trick, a mischievous act".  I can
> see nothing 
> sportive 
> > or mischievous about an act that can lead to
> someone's death.  I 
> > can't believe DD's casual attitude to it.  Ask
> yourself how you 
> would 
> > have reacted if one of your children had confessed
> to such 
> a "prank".
> > Sylvia (who knows damn well what would have
> happened to any of hers)
> 
> And I (Richard) reply:
> 
> Having been a "boys will be boys" kind of boy just a
> few decades ago, 
> I take a much different view of all this than do
> you.  Dumbledore is 
> looking at things from three perspectives: greatly
> seasoned age, the 
> same of wisdom, and from decades after the fact.  He
> knows what was 
> done was dangerous, but also that those parties grew
> out of their 
> callous youths and lived to fight real battles
> against real evils, 
> with courage and confidence.  He knows Harry sees
> the danger in what 
> was done, and that belaboring Harry with righteous
> condemnation would 
> serve little or no purpose but to alienate Harry.
> 

snip

> Having done things ranging from falling off a cliff,
> to jumping off 
> other cliffs, to talking calmly to my mother while a
> dart was stuck 
> in the back of my head (trying very hard to ensure
> she didn't see it, 
> as then we would have ALL been in serious trouble),
> to playing with 
> live copperheads and water moccasins, and a good
> many things in 
> between, as well as having seen friends do like
> things and worse, I 
> also know that none of us died.  We were boys ...
> OK, so we were 
> mostly American Indian boys, which means some things
> that most non-
> AmerInds will never understand ... and simply trying
> to find the 
> limits of what we could and could not do.  I also
> know that the lot 
> of us grew up to be about as confident, calm and
> self-assured as you 
> can get.  None that I still know of today has been a
> failure in life, 
> even if others might not agree with their personal
> senses of success.


> Richard
> 


Not to be a brat, but there is a difference between
the things you are describing and what the Marauders
did.  What you describe put chiefly you and your
friends, the people who chose to do these things, in
danger.  Not others.  There's a world of difference.


Rebecca




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