Things That Bang

This video had me fuming. A kid named Jonathan had been 'had' by his insensitive family when they gave him clothes in an XBox carton. The poor kid was heartbroken, his family snickered and his older brother uploaded the video on YouTube to share his younger sibling's humiliation with the world.

Engadget featured the story and were so mad that they decided to send him an XBox and they were flooded with hundreds of emails from readers and from Microsoft wanting to help out the child.

What made me mad was just not the prank but the brother telling his brother- You know we cannot afford an XBox as if that gave legitimacy to the hoodwinking.

We all know that feeling when as kids we wanted something so bad that we could taste it and many a times our parents used our need to teach us the value of money or not to bow down to peer pressure in case we used the excuse that everyone has it and so should we.

But to play such a prank was mean. All they had to do was sit the kid down and tell him that they couldn't afford the console- plain and simple- their family couldn't afford such a novelty.

On dig the story was dug over four thousand times and most considered the family to be douche bags. To some extent, sure, they completely lacked sense of humor but to say they were the worst parents was taking it too far.

Worst parents are those who leave their baby in car seat for eight days and play their video games causing the baby's death. Now that's neglect and abuse. The family obviously kept him warm, well fed and loved just that they lacked basic human sensitivity.

What happened in this case was an obnoxious prank that should not have been played on a kid.  Adults have better coping mechanisms and generally are able to laugh these things off but to do this to a boy no more than eight or nine was just heartbreaking for most of us adults who watched the video.