'Walking away' into the town square with no intention of coming back until his mother calls, and finding a place to stay the night is not mature.
Maturity is subjective, and regardless, it worked. Sometimes it takes the ultimate form of defiance to reach compromise. You have to show you will not be controlled; only then can your words be met with the respect it takes to instill reason where none existed beforehand. You're looking at this from an objective perspective; I'm putting myself in Angel's shoes.
Should he have walked away, like you said? Absolutely; screaming and arguing probably wouldn't get him anywhere. Should he have stayed within the confines of his own home or yard? Probably. Should he have at least been at a friend/other family member's house? Absolutely.
Why should he have done any of those things? Because you find them sensible choices? You're conjuring up an image of what
you would have done in that situation and applying it to someone else's mentality and way of handling things. Angel said he had no friends or relatives that he felt comfortable telling about the situation, which to me implies that he didn't have anyone he could trust to take care of him, ergo canceling out the possibility of him staying at someone else's house. And staying in his own house would have been psychological suicide: he was angry, his mom was angry, and their argument would have persevered as long as they were in the same vicinity as one another. He did what needed to be done to ensure that both of them had time to reconcile what had just happened with what needed to happen next.
Not only is it irresponsible to walk away like that, it's also illegal. His parents could have called the cops, and then they would have had to bring him home. This would have been a waste of the police resources, and probably would have made matters even worse.
This isn't an argument, it's a speculation, and an extremely flimsy one at that, especially considering the fact that it didn't happen. Few parents would actually call the police on their child after they had just had an argument. It's much simpler for everyone if conflicts remain within the family. I'm almost hesitant to even pay recognition to such a silly comment, but in terms of "police resources" and how
terribly wasteful it would have been for the cops to come pick Angel up, I will say that if he lives in a town like mine, they have nothing better to do, and if he doesn't live in a town like mine then they aren't going to be concerned about some fifteen year old kid running around in broad daylight.
YOU ARE NOT THE CONTENTS OF YOUR WALLET.
YOU ARE NOT WHAT'S IN YOUR BANK ACCOUNT.
YOU'RE NOT YOUR FUCKIN' KHAKIS.
I don't wear khakis. You aren't funny.
Because my age has something to do with my opinion? Two years ago, I would have said the same thing. Three years, I would have had the same message, I just would have expressed it differently. Don't assume that my opinion has something to do with the fact that I am seventeen.
I just find it comical when someone pretends to have all the wisdom in the world and they're all of seventeen. Have you ever been in Angel's situation? It's easy for you to sit in judgment and tell Angel this and that from an outside perspective, but rejection is not something anyone deals rationally with, especially when it comes from someone close to you. It's not like Angel was working with some magic wand and could just pause time and think his options through. He did what he needed to do in the time that he was working with to take care of
himself, and any assertion that that is ever a mistake is ludicrous. What his parents might have done, whether they would have called the police, whether he would have been grounded for life afterward; these aren't things that were or are in Angel's control. What was in his control was what
he was going to do, and from where I'm standing as someone who has been in similar situations more times than I can count, he did the right thing. And guess what; it worked! Surprise, surprise, but Angel's "immature, irrational overreaction" actually panned out exactly the way he said it would. You can live in your delusional "I'll fix everything with logic and a hint of tough love" paradigm: in the meantime, I prefer to handle myself according to reality.
Oh, and I find it hard to feel bad when he was treating KHI like it was fucking Twitter with more characters. Having a phone with the capabilities to get on the internet like that proves that he is OPPRESSED and UNLOVED.
Money is not happiness. Materialism is not security. He has a resourceful and practical tool and he put it to use. It doesn't mean his parents don't beat him (I'm not saying they do) or that he isn't depressed (I'm not saying he is) or that his life is some walk-in-the-park happy-go-lucky fantasy (I'm not saying it isn't). It just means that his parents buy him pretty, expensive things. I once met a woman whose husband used to physically abuse her on a day-to-day basis when he'd come home drunk after work. When he was sober, he bought her diamond-encrusted earphones for her iPod. I suppose it was so she could deafen the sound of his punches smashing her face in. Must have made it easier to take in, you know, him throwing all that money around. You know what he didn't pay for? The broken jaw that sent him to jail.
Also, what does "tl;dr" mean?
Shuri/Eli
