need opinions, maybe I'm overreacting?!

[Doug Rodrigues]

It's not just motorcycles. Many years ago I traded my bike and a few thousand for a 49 year old Cessna. Got it cheap because of the condition. The paint was dead. The radios and instruments were old, the upholstry was bad, but hey, the thing flew great. In aviation circles, my plane was the best example of embarrasment in the air. It belonged to somebody who couldn't afford anything better...Me. Anyway, I flew to a "fly-in" at Georgetown Airport in California one Saturday. It was a pancake breakfast fly-in. Lots of planes parked there showing off their shine, but I parked in the area away from the crowd because my bird was nothing to look at. I left the doors open to keep the interior cool from the mid-day sun beating down, as many pilots do. I returned after a while to find a kid about 8 years of age inside the plane standing on the pilots seat slamming the controls around. BANG-BANG-BANG. The kid was treating my plane as if it was a heavy duty playground toy. Dad, obviously a non-flyer, was outside looking on with a smile on his face. The equivalent would have been to find a kid jumping up and down on your gear shift lever. I reached inside and grabbed the other control yoke to stop the kid from beating the control stops to death. Dad says to the kid, "Okay, lets go look at something else," and walks off with the kid as if nothing was wrong? I was pissed, but didn't say or do anything. No sense going to jail for something I couldn't reverse when that Dad was too stupid to understand that the kid was doing wrong. That was about 20 years ago, but it still irritates me how stupid people can be. Also, I quit leaving the doors unlocked at fly-ins.

[jeffcoslacker]

Originally Posted by Doug Rodrigues

It's not just motorcycles. Many years ago I traded my bike and a few thousand for a 49 year old Cessna. Got it cheap because of the condition. The paint was dead. The radios and instruments were old, the upholstry was bad, but hey, the thing flew great. In aviation circles, my plane was the best example of embarrasment in the air. It belonged to somebody who couldn't afford anything better...Me. Anyway, I flew to a "fly-in" at Georgetown Airport in California one Saturday. It was a pancake breakfast fly-in. Lots of planes parked there showing off their shine, but I parked in the area away from the crowd because my bird was nothing to look at. I left the doors open to keep the interior cool from the mid-day sun beating down, as many pilots do. I returned after a while to find a kid about 8 years of age inside the plane standing on the pilots seat slamming the controls around. BANG-BANG-BANG. The kid was treating my plane as if it was a heavy duty playground toy. Dad, obviously a non-flyer, was outside looking on with a smile on his face. The equivalent would have been to find a kid jumping up and down on your gear shift lever. I reached inside and grabbed the other control yoke to stop the kid from beating the control stops to death. Dad says to the kid, "Okay, lets go look at something else," and walks off with the kid as if nothing was wrong? I was pissed, but didn't say or do anything. No sense going to jail for something I couldn't reverse when that Dad was too stupid to understand that the kid was doing wrong. That was about 20 years ago, but it still irritates me how stupid people can be. Also, I quit leaving the doors unlocked at fly-ins.

When I was a kid I was taught you don't even TOUCH anything without the owner's permission.

I would have thought this was common sense. Sadly, it seems not to be the case too often.

In your case I woulda said something like "Hey don't go...you can help me pre-flight it, make sure nothing got damaged...you got insurance, right?"

[richtazz]

I think the term "common sense" needs to be changed to "uncommon sense", as it doesn't seem too common anymore.

Back in my younger days when I was a lot less tolerant, there was more than one occasion where I told a misbehaving child that they better stop acting up before I beat up their dad for not stopping them. It may not have been the "right" thing to say (especially in today's liberal-pansy society), but it worked like a charm.