2002-10-03 - 8:27 p.m.
BEING ADULT
I�m looking at my twelve-year-old in a new light. Day-Hay is a reasonably mature twelve-year-old. She generally takes responsibility for her homework although she often needs a push toward the shower. Like any twelve-year-old, she occasionally loses it and she is impulse and lacks judgment. She usually pulls her punches, but she�s been known to throw one. I�m looking at her and I�m wondering. Would it ever be right to hold her with her very bright twelve-year-old brain, her twelve-year-old understanding, and her twelve-year-old maturity to adult standards? Should the answer change depending on whether she manages to do great harm?
Milwaukee had a terrible crime occur this past weekend. While adults can form mobs, this crime had a peculiarly teenage feel to it to me. When I was a teenage girl, I considered teenage boys much more attractive individually than in a group. I had good reason for that. Experience taught me that groups of teenage boys often go right down to the lowest common denominator. Group activity among them in the absence of strong adult presence too often bred impulsive grandstanding that had a potential for disaster. When the group was responsible, no one was responsible.
Adults in a group, of course, often take less responsibility for their actions too. The phenomenon is not restricted to male teens or even to teens in general. When a group is hellbent on doing something, it takes an extraordinarily brave person to stand up and say, �Stop.� Few of us do it. If we do anything, we walk away, say, �tsk-tsk,� and turn our backs.
What happened here was more than a dumb teenage trick. This group of kids prodded a ten-year-old to throw an egg at a man. When the man reacted, lost it, and punched a teen, the group exploded. They beat him with shovels and sticks. His flight into a neighbor�s house did not end it. They dragged him out and finished him off. They beat him to death.
Now the question is who we charge as an adult. There was talk of charging the ten-year-old as an adult. If he had been charged with first degree reckless homicide, under Wisconsin law he would automatically have gone to adult court. It then would have been up to his attorney to convince a judge to send him back to juvenile court. Given the community outrage and our election of judges, sending him back would have taken an extraordinarily strong judge. But we�ve been spared that spectacle because the district attorney blinked. He charged a lesser crime to avoid adult court. He can afford to take the heat. He always runs virtually unopposed. Still, I give him credit for seeing that a ten-year-old is no adult�not in any way that makes any sense at all.
Still, there are a bunch of thirteen-year-olds involved here. I�m guessing, based on past experience, that they will be charged so they end up in adult court. Attorneys will be forced to ask kids who can�t think past the next ten minutes to make complex decisions that will affect their whole lives. Attorneys will be forced to pretend, just as everyone else is doing, that these immature young teens think like adults.
I know that they don�t. I just have to look at Day-Hay to remind myself. Teens are not adults. At most, they are wannabes�and we need to be adult enough to face that fact.
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Update: The tests have been reviewed again and I�ve seen the surgeon. I�m saying goodbye to my gallbladder next Tuesday. I�m sure I�ll get nervous later but for now I�m mainly relieved that things are settled and I have hope of feeling much better.
LAST YEAR: Trying to Look Alive
LAST FIVE ENTRIES:
Accessible
War Paint
Longing for Green Stamps
Honesty
Inside the Box
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Copyright 2006 by Ellen |
