What was Thorin Montgomery thinking as he pressed the trigger?
It may seem a fool hardy and dangerous game to most, but to some people the allure of beating the bullet can be too much of an adrenaline high. This may to some degree explain how one Largo, Florida teenager over the weekend found himself on the wrong side of a bet that cost them their lives.
tampabay: LARGO — Surrounded by teenage friends on the back porch of his house, Thorin Montgomery was first up in a contest of Russian roulette.
Right away, the .38-caliber revolver fired its round. Badly wounded, the 17-year old was rushed to the hospital Friday night. Keeping vigil, friends wrote wishes online that he might summon some sort of inner strength and pull through.
But he died around 3 a.m. Sunday at Bayfront Medical Center. And friends who now dedicated Web posts to his memory struggled to reconcile how the teen with a bright smile and happy demeanor could be dead.
Reconcile how he could be dead? But wasn’t that part of the allure of playing the game? Wasn’t this in some way to affect daredevil acumen into one’s persona as populated by the classic, ‘the deer hunter.’ (see video scene below, discretion heavily suggested)
And for those wishing to make more sense of the dare devil game comes the following:
According to a 2008 study co-authored by John Hunsaker, an associate chief medical examiner in Kentucky, the majority of Russian roulette victims are men under age 30.
“A lot of activity by people in this age range is considered to be part of a thrill-seeking activity,” he said Sunday. “The high derived from whatever it is — whether they’re riding on top of subway trains, or putting a noose around their neck, or playing Russian roulette, the list goes on and on — is the reason behind it; not to kill themselves.”
Which raises the question why do young men take such risks in the first place? Is this the way one finds swagger, cache? Is this one way one gets the girls, the respect, the cool factor? Or is this just another way one gets to play a secret dare or devil game with one’s own secret desire to beat life at its own ends and at the same time take a chance on the dark side of their own nature?
“The notion typically is not to die. The purpose is to survive. But obviously, they’re reducing their chances of survivability considerably when they engage in such high-risk activity,” he said. “It’s been played for centuries, that thrill-seeking game, and likely will continue to be,” Hunsaker added.
The notion may not be too die, but implicit in that statement is the remote chance that someone can die and there lies the pathological thrill of pointing a loaded gun to your head. Anyone for a loading a bullet in a gun and taking their chances today?
“What was Thorin Montgomery thinking as he pressed the trigger”?
It’s pretty obvious that thinking wasn’t a strong suit of he or his friends.
But the last thing to go through his head, was a .38 caliber bullet.