It’s the wild west up there

This Christmas will be remembered as the year an entire generation of guys got their first drones.

Every one of them has already crashed, sometimes into houses, sometimes into streams. Sometimes the neighbors shrubbery gets trimmed.

So many things can go wrong, so many ways to get into trouble. It’s the perfect pastime for guys. You can do the “I wonder if it’ll break a window” experiment.

Attach roman candles to it and strafe the lawn, which is probably protected by the Second Amendment.

Ah, but the best places are beaches and parks. There’s a lot of space, the sand cushions the crash landings, and in the summer, there are girls in swimsuits.

“You shouldn’t be taking pictures of people on the beach!” a woman shrilly screams at the man flying the drone.

The young man in that case, unfortunately, made the mistake of standing in full view with his remote control.

There is a certain public hostility to drones, but there are ways to defuse that. Here’s a case where a drone crashed on a beach near a group of kids who immediately started attacking it … until they noticed the message on the fuselage.

“Wait, wait! It says ‘Reward!'”

Yes, a reward.

“Can we keep it?” asked one of the kids.

I’m generally skeptical about the value of high tech toys – since most of them are anti-social – but not drones.

They have a wonderful way of bringing complete strangers together.