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Monday, September 30, 2024

Kids Should Be Blindfolded and Dropped in the Woods at Night

Blindfolded kids, driven off in a car, and dumped into the woods at night. In America, we call that a crime. In the Netherlands? It's called a "dropping," and it's a beloved childhood tradition. 

"It's a rite of passage," says Mark Pols, an investor living in Silicon Valley who grew up in Holland. When he was a kid, Pols says, droppings (pronounced drope-ings) were always a part of scouting—and still are. "There'd be various degrees of challenge, meaning what time of night, how far away you'd get dropped, how few people you'd get dropped with, etc."

8 comments:

  1. Everything boils down to lawsuits. Everyone here is constantly looking for ways to sue everyone else.

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  2. We did to pledges. Pledges did it to brothers. You had to leave them with a quarter for a phone call. It was in the 70's so no one called the cops.

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  3. My kids and their school friends did this to each other. It was a weird local game they played. 5-10 yr ago.

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  4. A friend had a big old ranch is South Texas and when we were about 14 his dad would drive us out there with our guns, fishing and camping gear and a little food and drop us off. See ya Sunday! It was a blast.

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    Replies
    1. No welfare office and food bank within a quarter mile?
      That was cruel!

      Delete
  5. The govt is playing the same game by dropping haitans in small towns. Did not have that in the netherlands. Hopefully the kid drop off is not near the haitian dropoff.

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  6. If it was part of Scouting the boys had been trained on orienteering, finding shelter, etc. It was a final exam, not a shock out of the blue...

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