Cultural Normatives

We live in interesting times. They're inordinately interesting for teen-age boys, it would appear. Up to mischief, and more. Faced with irresistible temptations, and urging one another on to exploit opportunities that just happen to present themselves. These kids are impressively precocious. Imagine, three boys, all fourteen years old, making the decision to indulge in a little bit of car-jacking.

Fourteen years of age, with an ambition to perform brave deeds, the better to boast of, later. Knowing that, at least in Canada, the Youth Protection Act will ensure that they receive an obligatory wrist-slap, and little more. Their names are protected because they're vastly under-age, and even their parents are protected from notoriety that might result in publishing their names and addresses, to protect the privacy of their young 'uns.

Who can even begin to imagine what hormone-addled, adventure-obsessed, opportunity-craving young boys get up to?

Well, the news published on a daily basis certainly enlightens us. In this instance, three young boys in the Niagara region of Ontario taking possession of a Hummer, and driving it at breakneck speed - the better to indulge in the exhilaration of replaying a high-speed pursuit just like in the movies - with the Burlington-based Ontario Provincial Police hot on their tail lights.

Still, he-he, they managed to evade the police pursuit. Imagine, the bravado of three 14-year-olds and the engine-power of a Hummer, what a combination. No crashes. Hummer intact. Fourteen-year-old bodies intact. Nope, that's not the scenario. In fact, the boys deliberately struck three police cruisers, as police attempted to intercept them.

Who needs a war situation, who needs a lumbering, indestructible tank when you've got a Hummer and three kids who fantasize battle with the authorities?

Write off three police cruisers, damaged by collisions with a Hummer. And commend the OPP for calling off the chase, given the dauntless youngsters in charge of a whole lot of horsepower. The vehicle was soon after, however, spotted in a mall parking lot. Where, doubtless, the swaggering trio stopped to convince a shop owner they were old enough to buy smokes.

And where they were apprehended. What a lark! Surely there should be some mechanism by which the OPP on behalf of the Ontario taxpayer, could charge the parents for lack of parental oversight? And their penalty, one that would surely make them wince, could logically be to pay the freight for damage caused to 3 police cruisers...? Sparing the taxpayer the expense?

Worse things do happen with teen-agers.

In East Jerusalem, for example, two idling teens, aged 13 and 15, nurtured with a hatred for Jews, beat a 60-year-old American Jew to death for refusing to provide them with the requested cigarettes. He had the temerity to speak his mind to the two boys. And they took umbrage. Left him unconscious and bleeding in the center of the city, the bloody stick left beside him.

Other teens were there too, hanging around, and they witnessed the episode. And not one of them attempted to intervene, nor to check the condition of the man left beaten and bleeding. Hours later, the battered man discovered, he was rushed to Hadassah Hospital where doctors fought to save his life. He died.

A contrast in societal norms.