Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/03/07/texas-mom-arrested-after-her-bully-revenge-drink-hospitalizes-child.html
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Well, the one doesn’t rule out the other.
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I think the mother could have made the point by using bitter unsweetened tea or unsweetened anything…like warm water. But, noooooo…she had to get creative.
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Not supporting her actions, but the title is highly sensationalistic. “Hospitalized” implies time spent in the hospital.
The kid drank something that would, for better or worse, be a drink a hundred years ago, went to the hospital, they determined he didn’t drink the gatorade he thought he stole, confirmed it wasn’t poison, and sent him home.
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That concoction sounds like something people doing a “cleanse” in the 2010s would have had as their only meal each day for a week.
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Yeah, there’s nothing in that list of ingredients that would cause those symptoms, especially in the kind of dose from a sip-and-spit. The most toxic part was the Gatorade itself. So the kid is both a bully and a drama-llama.
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Wasn’t there a subplot in a H.Potter book when a bully got a bit of comeuppance and then some hippogriff or other is nearly beheaded (possibly in an alternate timeline of some multiverse) in the bully’s subsequent bit of “diving”? …sump’n lik’that.
Yeah, this is idiot chum for those who spend too much time on the Xitter.
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Absolutely not the way to deal with a bully…
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100 years ago, there would probably also be alcohol in it, but yeah. Here’s the kind of thing people used to make: Blaand - Wikipedia
lemon juice, vinegar, salt, and Gatorade
Unless we are talking about a lot of salt, this is pretty tame.
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If those in authority had stopped the original crime, then there would be no need for vigilantism.
I’m boldly assuming that the school has some sort of bullshit “zero tolerance” policy on bullying that was being selectively applied.****
Mom needs to mount the tried and true Texas defense of “mess with the bull and get the (poisoned) horchata.”
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.So did the bully actually steal it or was it offered freely? Seems like that’s an important piece of the story even though the mom would probably be in trouble either way.
Reminds me of a probably-apocryphal story I heard about some medical students who were annoyed that someone was regularly stealing lunches out of the communal breakroom fridge and ended the practice once and for all by leaving a delicious-looking sandwich containing a human ear.
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Of course, it would have been made with cheap, frontier-quality Gatorade until Florida became a state in 1845.
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Gatorade has been around longer than I thought!
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Not as old as the Coke I owe you. 
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How anyone could drink more than a mouthful of that is beyond me. 
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The mom is in trouble here, legally. The relevant statute says:
A person commits an offense if he intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, or with criminal negligence, by act or intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly by omission, causes to a child, elderly individual, or disabled individual:
(1) serious bodily injury;
(2) serious mental deficiency, impairment, or injury; or
(3) bodily injury.
and defines bodily injury very broadly as:
“Bodily injury” means physical pain, illness, or any impairment of physical condition.
I understand the mother’s concern about the bullying, but we cannot have people doing this. She’s not a doctor. She doesn’t know what the bully’s medical status is or what allergies he might have. In this case, no serious harm was done, but the potential for serious harm or even death is huge if behavior like this were to be allowed.
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Does it matter that it just tasted bad and the bully was faking? Because, if that ingredient list is accurate, the bully was definitely faking.
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You don’t think that concoction could cause nausea? Because nausea would be enough to qualify as “bodily injury”. And again, just because this particular concoction didn’t cause any harm to this particular child doesn’t mean that we should go “No harm, no foul. Good job, Mom!” We do not want people doing this. Again, what if she’d put something else in the drink. What if she read online that eye drops caused diarrhea and squeezed a whole bottle of Visine in the gatorade. Or put something with peanut oil in it and he had a peanut allergy. I’m not saying she should be locked up for 10 years to life, but her behavior cannot go unpunished. Charge her with this crime, let her take a plea deal and do community service.
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