Teenagers: Threat or Menace?

«b»{{{ Guest Blogging by NotDeskmerc }}}«/b»

If I had a concealed carry permit, and owned a gun, tonight's ride home from fetching dinner would have transpired very differently.

As it was, I now live in the suburbs. It's a quaint little "master planned community" here in Houston called The Woodlands. I moved here from uptown Houston where you could be fairly assured that: Generally, normal working people and their children will not approach you in a hostile fashion. If you are approached, you have a reasonable chance that they might either be drunk, insane, and/or possibly armed. As one great author said, an armed society is a polite one, and urban centers do tend to promote a certain silent civility amongst the middle-classes.

But in the suburbs, people lack that kind of awareness. Perhaps it is because they have yards and fences. Maybe it’s all the trees, or the fact that they name their streets things like “Wilted Orchardberry Ct.” and “Thrusted Chippingdale Lane”.

I’m not sure exactly what it is, but I know that teenagers in the suburbs are turning out incredibly stupid. So stupid that I wonder «a href="http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/ArticleView.asp?P_Article=12713"»how any of them ever survive«/a». But they do, and that means that more stupid adults are coming to voting age all the time. There ought to be some kind of charitable foundation for that.

Now that I’ve become a somewhat parent-like figure for a teenager (I’m marrying someone with a teen), I am coming to realize that I did some very, very dumb things as a teen. For instance, I look back on things like taking LSD with a kind of astonishment that I would have done something that dangerous. Before you start looking back in rose-colored reverie at your own drug experimentation days, let’s just consider the actual train of thought:

«BLOCKQUOTE»Here now, let’s take this chemical that I don’t understand at all (though I think I’m clever for knowing what LSD stands for), ingest it into my body where it will cause a reaction I can’t predict, and it will produce psychotropic effects that I don’t begin to grasp, and this will go on for many hours. Plenty of time to get myself into extreme amounts of trouble, including but not limited to death, insanity and murder, all the while completely lacking the proper psychological capacity to deal with it. I will do this thing partly out of curiosity since it is so taboo, but mostly because I think it will make me socially acceptable, and that this is far more important than my education, because I cannot conceive of ever being thirty.«/BLOCKQUOTE»

Now, that was me. And I was one of the smart ones. I was considered «I»gifted«/I». The teenager in my household is not gifted. He’s utterly average, and I can only wonder at what his thought processes are behind why he does what he does. I don’t think that I can actually contemplate anything so stupid. I can barely fathom my own stupidity at that age. You parents of teenagers know what I’m saying. If you don’t, then that probably explains why I almost hit your child tonight.

I don’t quite understand this natural proclivity for teenagers to be so profoundly stupid. Children aren’t that dumb. I have two younger children, and they are ignorant, but not stupid. They will come to me for information and heed the vast majority of my advice, particularly when it is framed in such a way that makes them believe that defying it will cause them bodily harm. This is as in, “Connor, do not play next to the street. These cars are fast and they can squish you flat, and you could die. Splat!” He will look at the street and nod solemnly, then scamper away to play in a more secure area. He stopped darting into the street the very first time he asked me how that frog got squished.

But tonight, I ran into a pack of teen spawn that apparently never learned about the circle of life on Cantersquirrel Street. Perhaps their parents never paused to stoop over that flattened frog carcass and explain things. But somehow I think it is more devious than that. These children obviously believe that they are so far above a mere frog that the rules of survival no longer apply to them. They must, because otherwise there is no logical reason for them to wander in front of my car, on their way back from swimmeet, dressed in little more than bathing attire, stop and make obscene gestures at me. Verily, baiting me “Come on!”

So, naturally, I put the car in neutral and revved the engine. They moved, but continued to shout things at me, and one even hit the side of my car. I stopped my car really suddenly, tires squealing and all, and they sort of faded away into deciduous forest. Secure in the knowledge that they are above reproach, much less horrible death.

But the thing is, there was absolutely no reason for them to think that I wasn’t perhaps a murderous psychotic. A prison escapee. A soccer mom too busy yapping on my cellphone and turning around to smack my own ignorant brood who are throwing Cheerios at each other in the backseat. Or perhaps a drunken husband who has just been served divorce papers after his third wife discovered his fourth affair and he’s running late for his flight to San Antonio. Any of these things are not only possible, but entirely reasonable to expect in the suburbs, and they all represent threats to belligerent teenagers who wander around on streets at night.

If I’d had a gun, I could have fixed that problem. I would have simply put my car in park, retrieved my gun, got out and pointed it at them. After I had their attention, I would explain the lesson that their parents evidently did not or cannot make them grasp.

«blockquote»“This is a gun, and I have a concealed carry permit. I’m old enough to do that. Now don’t go running off; you were perfectly willing to stand there a moment ago. Heh. I bet you wished you’d listened to your mothers when she told you not to play in traffic, huh?…. Well now, I want you all to go home quietly, do something nice for whoever is responsible for your pig ignorance, and devote yourself to your education… «I»especially«/I» physics… then you will understand that Newton’s First Law dictates that I ought to have hit you with my car. «b»But I have a gun«/b». And this is a slightly more social concept. I am more powerful than you, and you, being but young, inexperienced git, should from now on recognize where you are on the food chain. Very much farther down than I am. Get me? Good. [cocking gun] Now, run along. And for godssakes wash that crap out of your hair, you sell-out whitebread parasitic little fags.”«/blockquote»

As they ran for their lives through the dark, dense forest that now seems somehow much more appropriately foreboding, their little hearts would pound in their chests furiously, making them realize just how close they came to ending all that, but for the grace of God, and that God was me.

That would fix so much that is wrong with the suburbs.