Jennerbear said:
Again, I say - do you have a child that age? I have an extremely bright 8 year old girl who has been moved forward a grade. Someone would have had to dictate the letter to her and help her spell many of the words. Nope. I don't buy it. Uh uh. :snooty: Who was his partner in crime, hmmm? Do you think for a moment an adult was TRYING to sound foreign? Maybe? And perhaps that comes across as childish?
:twocents:
Jennerbear
I could have written it when i was 10. When I was 9, I wrote a complex Choose-Your-Own-Adventure which my primary (elementary) school considered publishing - but didn't
I was programming in BASIC on the Apple IIe. I was reading books such as "Broca's Brain" by Carl Sagan, "The Universe" by Patrick Moore, "Dune" by Frank Herbert, etc etc. I'm not blowing my own trumpet- I honestly couldn't care less if people think I am dumb as a brick, and in fact I don't regard myself as being particularly bright, as an adult. Maybe I partied too much at university
But your challenge - the unlikelihood of a young male writing the ransom note - does not present a stumbling block for me, in my experience as a young male. Burke was just shy of 10. If Burke was smarter than I was, which is quite likely, then why couldn't he have written it? There is a HUGE intellectual difference between a boy of age 8 and a boy of age 10. I'm sorry, I don't know how the sexes compare so I can't comment on your example of your own daughter.
And what if he had help from a slightly older male - say, an adolescent?
I remember when I was 10, riding on my dad's boat. The party on the boat were all drunk. When adults get drunk, they often become haughty, especially towards children. A middle-aged woman came over to me while I was driving the boat (yes, my dad let me drive... I was the only sober one on board). She looked at me, and smiled in a condescending way, and said, "I wonder what's going on in that little brain of yours?"
I remember thinking, very distinctly: "A lot more than what's going on in yours." I didn't say it, because at the age of 10, not only was I capable of a one-line quip, but I had enough modesty and self-doubt to know when things are best left unsaid.
That memory has stayed with me all my life. It is a reminder to me, as I age, that children are often much brighter than you think. Not all of them - some of them are pretty stupid. But there are some very bright ones mixed among them.
Personally, I am coming to the opinion that Patsy wrote that note to cover for Burke. That's my (wavering) opinion for now. But it is simply untrue to say that a very bright almost-10-year-old boy could not have written the note, especially if he had help from someone older. In my opinion, he could have written it solo.
The only indicators (in my opinion) that the note was written by an adult are older-style phrases like "fat cat". As for the text itself, & the narrative structure etc., it is wildly naive. If there's one thing a 9 year old boy is, it's naive. So don't dismiss this possibility out of hand.