*yawn*
A thick blanket of fog smothers the city, this morning. Due to the recent time change, it feels apocalyptic, as though the sun is not going to rise, today.
And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and lo, there was a great earthquake, and the sun was as black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon was like blood. And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, as a fig tree casteth her green figs, when it is shaken of a mighty wind. And heaven departed away, as a scroll, when it is rolled, and every mountain and isle were moved out of their places.
- Geneva Bible, circa 1560 A.D.
Slowly, the faintest of glows can be seen filtering through the gray haze o’er the Santa Ynez Mountains and I breathe a soft sigh of relief. It couldn’t possibly be the end of the world as we know it, because the garbage truck just pulled up – its lights flashing and low gutteral growl awakening every last living entity on Garden Street. They wouldn’t bother picking up the trash on the morning of Armageddon, right?
Certainly, this is hell, already. Square-wheeled trash bins clatter up the concrete walkway by our house – strategically below my bedroom window – in a defiant din of disdain for my daily contribution to modern consumerism. Note to myself: Use less Q-Tips.
I’ve been up since well before daylight, reading the news and pondering the plight of mankind. I’d rather be playing a computer game and killing CGI Nazis, but I’m in a mood. Real world evils seem to be lumbering out of the shadows at an ever increasing frequency like fucking vampires in From Dusk Till Dawn.
The world has a dark side. You can try to hide behind a locked door, your rosary beads or a .357 magnum, but it is the fear, itself, that is the real killer. This realm of duality cannot be traversed without darkness. Without it, you wouldn’t even know what light was, much less be able to appreciate, approach or emulate it assuming that light is even “good” and worthy of pedestalizing.
Yesterday afternoon, a local boy was killed in downtown Santa Barbara. Beautiful, idyllic and tainted Santa Barbara with its beach bums and State Street vagrants. This Pacific paradise has a cancer and it’s eating away at our youth. While some children are well-behaved, respectful and studious, some have a darker side than others. These are the youth upon whom we must shed a little light.
14-year-old booked in gang slaying
March 15, 2007 9:59 AM
Santa Barbara Police say a 14-year-old boy is responsible for the stabbing death of a 15-year-old, Wednesday, during a gang fight in downtown Santa Barbara. Neither boy’s name has been released.
Police Department spokesman Lt. Paul McCaffrey said the dead boy suffered multiple stab wounds to the torso and “possible bludgeoning wounds to his head.” The boy is a Santa Barbara resident with known gang ties, the lieutenant said.
The teenager accused in his killing also has gang ties and was booked at Juvenile Hall on suspicion of homicide, according to Lt. McCaffrey. The broad-daylight fight rocked downtown.
There is no quick fix to this. No pill to pop or vaccination will make this problem go away, overnight. A few words in a newspaper, hushed whisperings in school hallways or a tirade of blogs will not bring this boy back. Escapism is defeatism and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Boys should be kicking soccer balls and footballs, not each others’ balls. They should be dancing with girls, not stepping on their school mate’s toes. Boys should be carrying marbles in their pockets, not switchblades. Perhaps I’ve lost my marbles of youth and live in a dreamworld.
Who is responsible? Is it the Santa Barbara police, who just received a nice pay raise? Can they be everywhere at once? Are the teachers and school staff to blame, since they let the little tykes out early? We could just chalk it up to kismet or the continuing decline of Western civilization – if you can call this civilized.
I empathize with the families of the victims and perpetrators, alike. No parent should have to bury a child, even an errant unruly one. Who among us has not misbehaved? But murder? I don’t recall knifing anyone over the flashing of gang symbols, though I’ve been flipped off by the best of them.
The gangs at my school were the jocks and the geeks. I survived the brutish hell of rude adolescent rivalry and redneck angst and, thankfully, was never in an actual schoolyard brawl. For sheer survival’s sake, I learned to avoid certain morons and not fan their solitary flame of id flickering in the vacuum-like cavern between Neanderthal ears.
Being called queer – meaning faggot – for wearing high-water blue jeans or white tube socks, was one of their more endearing salutations. Who knew that my limited country wardrobe would raise the hackles of frightened homophobes? If I were gay, wouldn’t I have had a better fashion sense?
I never bothered my parents with this gauntlet of gangly teenage piffel and learned to grow a thick skin. My mother did the best she could buying our school clothes from J.C. Penny or from the Sears & Roebuck Catalogue. Some school chums were treasures, while others were trailer trash.
We didn’t have any black kids, yellow kids or brown kids at our school. They were all your average, run-of-the-mill white hillbillies and the only true color I ever saw was the occasional flash of red from the back of someone’s neck. I don’t think they were working on a farmer’s tan.
Different cultures, skin tones, languages and looks may exacerbate the problem between children of all ages, but the weight of evidence in our daily news would tell us that some kids are simply mean and maladjusted – no matter their epidermal hue.
A gaggle of child psychologists, learned counselors and pacifist parents would love to live in a Utopian society where corporal punishment isn’t necessary. I, too, humor myself with certain fantasies about life and how it should be, could be and would be if we only loved each other enough to just get along. Then, I wake up, suddenly, after the next day’s headlines sucker punch me with a rude reality check, realizing that I’m still living in this world – the one where kids are killing kids.
There’s something to be said for positive visualization and creating a beautiful new world by merely thinking it into existence – the Phoenix giving birth to itself and rising from its own ashes – but until I see hard physical evidence of the shifting mass consciousness towards that reality, then I’ll keep looking over my shoulder. As to the continued belief by many that you shouldn’t swat a child – it might harm him or her, psychologically – I say, as a parent, if you don’t swat them when they’re young, someone else may have to S.W.A.T. them, later.
Do some parents and adults go overboard in punishment? Of course. Do some pacifists and peaceniks go overboard in their unwillingness to discipline children and society? Of course. I believe in moderation in all things – except excess. Is that a conundrum? Of course – and free love is a misnomer. Nothing is free. But tough love, though painful, at times, can be priceless.
“This is going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt you.” Only a parent truly understands this adage. Spare the rod, spoil the child. No pain, no gain. Caning the child, however, is excessive.
I feared my father’s wrath and hand more than I did any school bully and learned, quickly, to obey or face the consequences. No one loves being punished and I didn’t like my dad very much on certain occasions – when I was discovered lying, misbehaving or neglecting my chores. Darn, I was caught being bad; I think I’ll hate my father. I have never stopped loving and respecting my father, however, and to this day, I’m thankful for his discipline, no matter how heavy-handed it was, in those moments.
The existential, psychological, philosophical, moral, ethical and sociological issues surrounding the proper care and feeding of children in today’s world would fill an encyclopaedia and I doubt that I am qualified to pen it, so I’ll cut to the chase.
Here are my very real and practical thoughts about what I think is a logical approach to this local dilemma:
- If the city knows that gang members like to hang out near the bus station, then put up a camera. It’s cheaper than a police officer and you’ll capture the faces of the little shits.
- Kids, if you walk, talk and act like a gang-banger, you will be profiled as such and adults will watch you, closely. You may not appreciate it, but that’s reality. Don’t hang or bang with fuckheads.
- Unless you’re on an organized, sanctioned and recognizable school team – wearing appropriately matching togs – when more than three of you gather together, you will be considered a threat.
Harsh? Yes. Absurd? No. Read the news. An invasion of your privacy and right to assemble? Who cares? You’re killing each other and threatening society. Help police the matter and the standards will be relaxed. I’m not interested in what makes you kiddie-poos feel good, especially if you act like fucking heathens on the city streets. If you want respect, earn it.
Let the psychologists figure out how to best reach your inner child when it’s lying, tranquilly, on a leather couch at $75 an hour. If your inner child becomes an outer problem in my world, I’m going to back-hand you right there in the frozen foods section in front of god, your girlfriend and your momma. Apparently, violence is the only thing you understand. Sad? Yes. If you want civility, act civil. Of course, I would be arrested for harming a child – in this event – with the bent mentality of today’s society.
It’s called tough love. I believe discipline is love. Discipline is self-respect, self-worth and self-esteem. Would it be better if every child received a hug and the proper amount of love and nurturing from an early age onward? Absolutely. Does this always occur? No. As a result, some children – due to a lack of love, guidance and proper discipline – fall to the wayside, fall behind or fall over the edge into oblivion because they lack the skills set, self-motivation or will to survive in a manner that is non-threatening to other creatures.
The cosmic equation is simple: Ignorance breeds Fear. Out of fear, all else tumbles. If children or adults were not afraid, they wouldn’t knife each other or try to make nuclear weapons. If children of every age were not ignorant, they would have no reason to be afraid.
The difficult part is trying to teach someone who thinks they already know everything, right George?
Even with wonderful parents and a superb home life during early development, some kids are still little shits. Not all of them can be saved. They need to bring something to the party, too, when their souls arrive on the planet. And if we were a great society, we’d do a much better job of properly educating children before they popped out more degenerate fucktards.
- For the kids who were, allegedly, noticed filming this murder on their cellphones and seen laughing about it, you obviously have no dignity, integrity or shame. Thus, if guilty, you should have your cellphones taken away for life, be forced to scrub the blood from the street at this and the next ten gang slayings (inevitable, apparently), and put in detention to write a 5,000 word personal essay on “Why I am a Fucktard.”
- Naturally, the actual 14-year-old murderer should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law – as an adult. I’m tired of treating some of these hellions with kid gloves. They’re not children, they’re animals. Make an example out of some of them and you may actually reach and deter the other punks teetering on the brink of self-destruction. It’s called the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
- Though a complicated issue, I think parents need to bear more responsibility for their children’s discipline, especially a child so young who’s caught committing such a heinous crime. If more parents suffered due to their child’s poor choices, I think parents would get a better handle on this deteriorating situation.
- Finally, I’d make it a law that, unless humanity was radically close to extinction, no one under 30 would be allowed to breed, and you’d have to earn a special Masters of Parenthood degree. Upon graduation, you would be handed a diploma and a key to your chastity belt.
Because we have few in our justice system with the ancient wisdom of Solomon doesn’t mean we should not make the attempt to discern the truth of each case and punish those directly responsible. If that means some parents are pulled into the fray, so be it.
I am a parent, too, and I wouldn’t appreciate any of my children committing an act that is going to involve me, publicly, but that’s the point. Too often we wish to wash our hands of that which we’ve created. Ultimately, we are all responsible.
Though the old saw “It takes a village to raise a child” sounds poetic and profound, I wonder how many villages are actually practicing this. It doesn’t seem fair that it takes a whole village to raise one child, but it only takes one child to kill another child.
Now, how is our village going to clean up the mess our children have made?
The Kat
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