Three tender moments between fathers and sons. Isn’t bonding great?
WHAT WAS HE INKING? During a backyard barbecue in spring 2009, Eugene Ashley, 24, of Floyd County, Georgia, decided that his three-year-old son needed a tattoo. So Ashley (who had been drinking heavily) fetched his tattoo gun and got to work inking the shoulder of his toddler (who was crying heavily). Neither the boy’s mother nor the Floyd police were amused by Eugene’s antics. “You keep thinking you’ve seen everything,” said the arresting officer, “and then, voilà!” Eugene was charged with child cruelty and lost custody of his son—who now sports a tattoo that reads “Daddy’s Boy.”
DESIGNATED DODO. A 41-year-old father from Clio, Michigan, was too drunk to drive one night in 2007, so he gave the keys to his 13-year-old son. A patrolman later found them in a park with their pickup truck stuck in the mud. The officer gave the father a breathalyzer test. He failed and was cited for DUI. But then the officer noticed that the boy didn’t look quite right, either…and administered a second test. The son turned out to be just as drunk as the father, and was also charged with a DUI.
THE BIG LIGUES. In September 2002, 34-year-old William Ligue Jr. and his 15-year-old son, William III, were attending a Kansas City Royals baseball game. Standing 25 feet away from them on the infield was Tom Gamboa, the Royals’ 54-year-old first-base coach. For some reason, the Ligues—both shirtless—jumped the fence and rushed Gamboa during a play. “It felt like a football team hit me from behind,” Gamboa said. “Next thing I knew, I’m on the ground trying to defend myself.” The Ligues pounded the hapless coach until players in the dugout rushed out and broke up the scuffle. Father and son were led away in handcuffs. And to this day, it’s still the proudest moment in young William III’s life (judging from how much he brags about it on his MySpace page). More good news: “I’m expectin’ a little shorty.” Watch out world, here comes William IV!
The American Psychiatric Assn. lists four different caffeine-related mental disorders.