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Sorry, but I don't know what "flame away" means.
I read that article with the Johnston boy earlier today, and what struck me is that he's dropped out of high school just as his senior year is beginning to work as an apprentice carpenter on the North Slope. I guess that's considered a good career, but it struck me as a sad choice for such a young boy.
Just as he's leaving his childhood behind, he's now being presented with fatherhood.
Imagine this as our Second Family - a scandal-ridden professional woman/mother who didn't do a very good job of raising her kids, with a pregnant teenage daughter, a son in the Army in lieu of the slammer for selling drugs, and three younger children who have been schlepped from city to city to serve as props for their parents while their mother pursues a job for which she's not even remotely qualified.
Say they lose. Whatever will those kids' lives be like then? The pregnant teenager marries her boyfriend, has the baby (or vice versa), and then sits at home with the child while he's off working, as the professional mother/grandmother is somewhere else, trying to hold onto her job or seeking re-election. The younger one will, no doubt, be in charge of taking care of the newest baby, and the middle girl, who seems sweet as can be, is left to her own devices. Let's hope she learned something about birth control from her older sister, because her mother surely isn't about to do the right thing on that score.
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