December 10, 2012

  • Real Funny Joke

    Anyone who’s been on a college campus should find this the opposite of shocking:

    Colorado students allegedly feed unsuspecting class pot-laced brownies.

    Even acknowledging the predictability of this behavior irks me, however.  It’s a twist on the old “spike the punch bowl” prank, of course.  The “spike the punch bowl” prank was never very funny, and its consequences are far too serious to merit the designation “prank.”

    Thank goodness, there is a legal system in place to deal with such unfunny “jokes,” and I am hearing little call for leniency in this matter.  Thank goodness, people got sick enough to demonstrate the seriousness of this misbehavior, but not sick enough (please God) to suffer lasting consequences.

    Just imagining one of my students doing this to me last year, while I was pregnant, is enough to put me in an exceedingly humorless frame of mind.

    It makes me want to share something I’ve found creeping into my Mom-Of-Teen-Boy lectures of late: the warning that the teen and early adult years are especially perilous these days, because the opportunity to cause rather grown-up devastation rests in the hands of people who are still very childish.  The power to harm, whether through inattention or a moment’s rebelliousness, increases drastically, and well before the power to control oneself is expected to be developed.

    A preschooler can hurt himself and others with his carelessness or disobedience, but it takes a rather extraordinary chain of events for a preschooler’s misdeeds to result in anything more serious than an afternoon spent in the Emergency Room.  (Or, perhaps, a rather extraordinary preschooler.  But I try not to think about that too much when Theo’s around.)

    A high schooler’s carelessness or disobedience can cause a whole lot more damage.  He simply has more power to wield (a car, an internet connection, functional reproductive organs, strong muscles, rhetorical skill), a greater reach (adult-sized limbs, a wider circle of acquaintances, an internet connection), and a more public record of his misdeeds (transcripts, and darn that internet connection).

    Add to the capacities and emotional stability of a teenager unfettered access to the trappings of adulthood and you have a college campus.  Add a little money and an inflated sense of entitlement, and . . . well, I shouldn’t say more until I’ve got my degree in hand, should I?

    So, a plea to parents of teens: do not read this story and content yourself with clucking about the legalization of pot or about what “other people’s teens” do.

    Show this story to your kids and remind them that they are beginning to wield an immense amount of power, power their underdeveloped characters are not yet ready to wield with prudence.  Remind them that it only takes a few minutes for them to turn their own lives into a living hell, or to visit that hell on those around them.

    Show this story to them right along side stories of texting-and-driving tragedies, of plagiarism scandals, of extramarital affairs gone drastically, newsworthily wrong.  Show them what the combination of immense power and an ungovernable will does to people.  Show them what it looks like when a child’s temper is combined with adult-sized bodies and powers and desires and responsibilities.

    Show them the ways adults screw up their own lives and the lives of others, and let them know that your stupid, silly rules, your invasive questions, your insistence on continuing to parent them during these years has everything to do with helping them to be the kind of adults that do not hurt themselves and those around them.

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