t-rex moon

St Pat's at the Young Feller's...we get into a strange, drunken conversation about capital punishment we've gotten into before.

'I know I'm meant to be a lefty but...' the Young Feller says.

He reckons there are two instances where capital punishment is permissible -- serial killers and masterminds of child pornography syndicates.  (There are so many children so open to abuse, he says the deterrent needs to be the death sentence.)

I say (in relation to serial killers), 'But some people have come from terrible backgrounds.  It's not their fault that they've been born into them.'

'Yeah, but what's the point?' he says.  'They're not going to be open to rehabilitation, if they escape or they're let out, they're just going to kill other people.  Why not just put them down?  Like dogs with rabies.  It's just a waste of time, keeping them in maximum security.'

I don't know what the evidence base for any of this is. I think of Capote's account of death row inmates exhausting the prison library, spending their days drawing and going on hunger strikes.

'I just can't go there, killing people as a solution,' I say, knowing that people are killed for less every day on the planet.  'You don't know whether people are redeemable or not.'

I'm my father's daughter in this, wanting to give everyone a chance, even the lame and rabid dogs.  My father hied from lost days of fair play, where everyone must be given an equal chance (yes, a fair go, in the rhetoric of our PM), everyone must be listened to, and everyone must be treated with respect and dignity.  A  bit like the father in My Father's Moon.

And I guess if I decide on a principle, I want it to be applied unilaterally.  Like my father.

The Young Feller's wife and I say how affecting we found the case of Van Nyugen as an argument against capital punishment.  The Young Feller says he's more moved by the case of the Bali Nine as genuinely deluded drug mules.  'Besides, don't you think Nyugen's funeral arrangements were pretty naff?' he says.

Harry, the Young Feller's 3 yo son, says that since it's a full moon, he might change into a female stegosaurus.  (Where would small children be without dinosaurs?) 

'You can be a mummy stegosaurus and I'll be a baby stegosaurus,' he says to his mother.

What will I be, I ask, and will there be any gender-bendering involved?

'Elsewhere can be a sharp-tooth,' he says.

'A sharp-tooth?'

A sharp-tooth is a tyrannosaurus, I'm informed.  Ok, I'm reasonably flattered.  A T-Rex was my favourite dinosaur when I was a child (before I found out what they did).

Comments

[third cat]

The death penalty is wrong in all circumstances. No shades of grey. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

[third cat]

erm, for no reason at all I would have pictured you more as a stegosaurus than a T-Rex. Those T-Rexs are frightening, but frightening. And you know the interesting thing? Children never ask you to be a pterodactyl (my personal fave).

[Kate]

I think you could start a blog-meme here: what dinosaur are you?