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During my early high school career, a friend and I were spur-of-the-moment trunk-smuggled by his brother and another friend into an early summer drive-in double feature, which also included a fifth of Bacardi, a 2-liter bottle of coke, and a bong. The movies were Blue Thunder and Q. By the time Q rolled around (apols for the pun), judicious application of the rum & coke and bong made the night most enjoyable, despite both films’ utterly lacking any redeeming quality whatsoever.
There is absolutely no comparison between this rather amusing and hardly atypical (for 1981-ish and before) teenage tale of fun and what this warped woman forced upon her ill son. Our trunk ride lasted only 5 minutes at most, at very low speed; how long and fast a trip was this child subjected to? We were healthy, silly kids who made the decision to do that. This child is ill and was coerced.
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Honestly, it sounds like panic. I do know that, as someone who grew up in the 90s with Boomer parents, if the car seats were full, they believed it was acceptable to put a kid in the trunk. No idea if that’s at play here but, I wonder.
She is not accused of being a bad teacher, just a felonious parent.
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So I’m reading the book, “The Body Keeps the Score.” It’s a good book about how we deal with trauma and how we deal with abuse and how the body always has a physiological record of it.
And I’m not going to assume anyone’s mental status or issues here, so I’ll be vague when I say this… there’s a LOT of stories of abuse in this thread by parents and I think people need to face up to that trauma or they will suffer for it.
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This woman is not a Boomer, this is not the '90s, and were any of those trips with the car full perchance to take the kid in the trunk to hospital because they were seriously ill? No? Then your equivalence does not apply.
Please do not confuse “moral panic” with “justified outrage”.
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I don’t know of any half way decent parent who would put their sick kid in a trunk, though… even in the 70s, 80s, and 90s…
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Parenting has a certain maker spirit, constantly improvising solutions without an instruction manual. But sometimes people think that nonconventional solutions are more dangerous than they appear at first. Try being someone who makes electronic devices with wires sticking out after 9/11.
Nobody in this thread has pointed to a particular risk of the trunk. Okay so there are no seatbelts, like on a schoolbus. And it would be hard to escape in an accident, like rear seats with childlocks. But the biggest risk is simply the unknowns: is there an exhaust leak in the trunk? What untested event would happen in an accident?
It is these unknowns that hold the true danger. On both sides. How much more Covid exposure would riding in the cabin give? In this case people are used to riding with their kids in the cabin so it doesn’t look like such an unknown. But few have enough actual experience riding with Covid positive people in their cabin to know the limits of safety there.
To me it is entirely rational to take some risks to avoid exposure to a known source of COVID. I might not have made her same choices, but making choices is very much what this timeline is about and I support her for making unconventional choices in the name of safety.
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Ugh, I know I’m going to be part of the shunned crowd here, but I’m on the “it might not be abuse” side.
Yes, this absolutely could be an abusive parent.
BUT, when I was a teenager, I had a good, fun relationship with my parents. And I could totally imagine at some point us looking at each other and me saying “shit, we need to get to a testing site, but I can’t drive and I don’t want to get you sick. I know, how about I ride in the trunk?!?” And them saying yes, because they were the kind of people who also let me hang on to the roof of the car holding onto the roof rack driving slowly on an empty dirt road.
Poor judgement on their part? Of course. Dangerous? Yes. Arrestable offense? Well, perhaps for the danger aspect, for not having me buckled into a proper seat, but not for child abuse.
So is that this child’s relationship, or is this child intimidated by his abusive mother? I have no idea.
They had me at Crumple Zone.
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I’m sorry, that’s just not true.
We listed off numerous risks, numerous times in this thread, and you keep diving in to justify this horrible choice. And ignore what people are saying.
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(As well as to all those who think because they rode in the back of the ‘70s Family Truckster that it compares to this situation)
The trunk of vehicles prior to the late 80s and early 90s was a solid part of the chassis. That was in the era before crumple zones and airbags. In modern cars, trunks are crumple zones. They are designed to collapse in order to absorb impact. This is what a modern vehicle trunk looks like after a rear collision:
In as little as a 25 mph crash, there is no trunk. That’s why this act was so fucking stupid. It makes me physically nauseous to even contemplate putting one of my own kids in a trunk.
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Which will crumple at relatively low speeds. Even a fender bender will sent something crashing around in the trunk, many of which have exposed metal bars at the hinges! concussion and broken bones for a minor car accident and crush injuries, broken spine, and death for anything faster.
10mph
20mph- crushed into wheel
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As well as inaccurate. If there was a person in a trunk during a rear-end collision, the body wouldn’t be nearly that intact. Jello would have more physical integrity.
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The whole asphyxiation thing just kinda goes without saying…
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Exhaust and asphyxiation are not really an issue in modern, unibody vehicles. The trunk is part of the cabin, in terms of air space. If there is exhaust in the trunk, it’s also in the cabin, and the driver is already at risk of carbon monoxide poisoning.
The real risk here is turning anyone into the trunk into pate in the event of even a low-velocity rear collision.
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