Kids these days! What's to be done?

No, this post is about the people who regard youth, with a green, bitter envy – after all, the young ones will live, while we old farts will surely die first. Not fair! In fact, in my days, those snot-nosed whipper-snappers did not talk sass to their elders like kids today – they were too busy fighting off hungry wolves with their asbestos-lined schoolbags on their ten mile hike to school through the arctic permafrost. And forget about packing lunches – we had to KILL for our food with our bare hands. So if you came to class without a uniform covered in blood and entrails, and with all your limbs attached – that’s a paddlin’!

Seriously though, rowdy teenagers with their dangerous-looking haircuts and unintelligible slang may certainly be (in our vivid senility-laced imaginations, at least) a menace to South Central – but going to such great lengths as some neighborhoods in Rotterdam, Denmark, to deter the little devils from hanging around in the streets by installing a “teen repellent” system known as The Mosquito, seems downright excessive.

What is this high tech solution to an age-old problem? The Mosquito is a simple device that emits a high-frequency sound that is audible only to those 25 and younger – any older than that, and our hearing deteriorates enough that we don’t perceive the annoying – and headache-inducing – buzz. This is similar to those noise-based pet discipline devices they sell to keep your mangy mutt in line. And for those lucky ones who are still hanging on to their youthful sense of hearing past 25 – sucks to be you!

“Where are we supposed to hang out?” asks one of the prepubescent interlopers. The answer is clear – the sewers. The deep and cavernous sewage networks of Denmark would be a great place to play and develop the sort of social skills kids will need to get ahead in their society. Perhaps with the aid of a giant hyper intelligent rodent sensei, they will develop the good manners, team spirit, and martial arts abilities which will help them truly come out of their (half?) shells, as it were, and help reduce Rotterdam’s crime problems yet further.

Some would say it is clearly an overreaction on the part of business owners and the authorities – but an overreaction that equates to lucrative profits for Rhine Consulting Group, the company importing Mosquitoes into Denmark. Little do they know what they are setting themselves – and their customers – up for.

“It makes the kids irritable and aggressive. It makes them want to tear the device off the wall,” warns Jan Schelleken, a Charlois social worker critical of the devices. You are quite right, Jan. Your cranium is next in line – these skateboarding bozos will stop at nothing to get at the delicious gray matter within. And you think teens are vulnerable, what about the effects on small children and babies? Even if there is no long term hearing damage, spontaneous combustion, or rapid-onset zombism, being subjected to unnecessary environmental stresses such as this doesn’t do anyone’s sanity much good. Where do families spend time with their children? The Mosquito does not differentiate between kids loitering, and families enjoying their day together.

As a member of the ‘over 25′ gang, I suppose I am safe from the ill effects of this device. But I can’t help but wonder if it is it right to assume that young people create unrest and crime simply by playing in the street and ‘hanging out’, and to treat each of them like some sort of biblical plague?

Like wine, genocide is better with age.

There are bad seeds in every age group. Joseph Stalin, for example, came into office at the tender age of 44 – a great age for genocide. Old Joe S. was just one year younger than the monster Adolf Hitler, 45, also starting a productive career of murdering people in large numbers. Another couple of years, and Vladimir Lenin, 47, leads the Communist revolution, destroying many lives. A decade to live, and we have the mediocre lame duck president, George W. Bush, making his grand entrance – shock and awe in attendance – at the age of 55. One more year gone by, and liar-liar Richard Nixon, 56, takes the oval office by storm, Watergate and all.

Seems to me like the 40-and-up crowd creates much more damage to society than the headphone-sporting hookey-playing anklebiters. Should society be taking safeguards to ensure this far more dangerous age group remains contained as well?

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I, for one, welcome our Space Kitten overlords.

You see, I had the dubious fortune of being born left-handed. This means that, had I not been ‘fixed’, my right hand would have been free to perform the requisite finger-wiggles for summoning the Ancient Über-Wyrm of Planetary Destruction (and Kittens), causing the sudden and painful cessation of all life as we know it (except for kittens). The kittens, who would rise to be a dominant form of life on this barren shell of a planet, would soon achieve sentience and engender a brutal culture of slavery and warfare. Traveling through the solar system and the Milky Way, the bloodthirsty Space Kittens would conquer other sentient races and lay claim to their bounties, eventually becoming a dominant force in the galaxy, to be worshiped and feared by all. However, their claim to power would be short-lived. Not a millennium has passed by when somewhere deep inside the Betelgeuse system, a charismatic leader of a fledgling sentient race of wind-up chimpanzees – or, Wimpanzees, as they prefer to be called – heads a rebellion against the Space Kittens, winning decisive victories in system after system, with their “gorilla combat” techniques, which the Kittens were not adequately prepared for. Sensing the balance of power tipping, the ruling tribunal controlling the Kitten space empire, the Meowmix, decides to employ the one weapon which they know the Wimpanzees cannot resist – the BANANATOR. An appealing choice, but not one without risk – as the weapon has never been tested during its thousands-year existence for this very purpose. When the fateful day arrives, the eldest of the Meowmix, Her Cutest Preciousness Princess Snowpuff the Improper Urinator, is charged with triggering the device to end the war once and for all. With a reluctant press of the dainty paw, the BANANATOR is activated… and as the time-space continuum tears open with a whimper, the last thing Snowpuff sees before turning into atomized cat food is the Chiquita Banana(tm) logo, above an expiration date of some time in 1992.

So you can see why my 1st grade teacher, Mrs. Nina Zaharovna, felt threatened – it was not a matter of if, but when, before my demonic potential becomes a reality. So as any reasonable human being looking out for the continued existence of her race and that of other non-kitten species on Earth, she had to squash my problem before it became the universe’s problem. A great proven way to deal with left-handed mutants like myself was to discriminate in grading, citing ‘neatness’ of my handwriting as the reason I could never get above a C for the same correct answers as my fellow A students. Not that my handwriting was a beautiful work of art – people still think I’m a doctor when they read my handwritten notes. But it is clear that once my self-esteem and confidence were sapped, I would simply not realize the potential of my lefty powers, and instead join some Emo mope-fest band. Or start a blog. Or become a doctor.

But I was made of stronger stuff (still am – see, not a single Doctorate to my name!). I plodded on, submitting all my assignments, doing my best to keep up with Nina Zaharovna’s increasing demands for neatness – meanwhile, my parents were constantly trying to re-train me, to convert me back to the ‘right side’ of handedness. Because they too were under pressure – their son was practically a menace to South Central, as declared by his schoolteacher at the parent-teacher meetings. One thing about those Soviet parent-teacher meetings – they were all about openness and transparency. That means all comments about your kids were being said via loudspeaker, in an auditorium filled with other kids and parents. Yes, the teacher (in this case, Nina-Z) would lambaste the student (in this case, myself), his parents, and their child-rearing skills – in front of the whole damn school – while being as condescending and snooty as possible. Other kids and parents would snicker at particularly biting remarks. “Heh heh.. yea, you take that.. you.. you lefty-enablers!”

You're not paranoid if they really ARE out to get you!

The peak of my schoolteacher’s campaign to save me from a life of left-handed planetary terrorism was to order my parents to take me for a psychiatric evaluation. That’s no joke, kids – my teacher basically told my parents that I need to be checked out by a psychiatrist. Because my right-handed attempts at handwriting were not sufficiently improving in appearance, and my habit of daydreaming in class was causing her to go through wooden hand-slapping rulers like a ho on 18th street goes through herpes meds – I suppose she thought a lobotomy would help me writer neater script AND focus on being a drooling vegetable. Perhaps she was right. Either way, after a short conversation with the receptionist at the local nut house, me and my parents turned our backs on that proud institution and instead started focusing on how to get the hell out of the USSR.

Now, the things that really pop out at me in this (cautionary? kitten-themed?) tale is that a) my parents actually agreed to take an 8-year-old kid who liked to daydream and had bad handwriting to the nut house – perhaps there was room for two more in the loony bin, and b) despite all these idiotic and misguided methods, my handwriting still sucks monkey balls, and I still like to daydream when I should be more productive… but at least we’re not in the USSR anymore. So at they certainly did something right. Go parents!

REMINDER: The date of the Kitten Apocalypse has been moved forward to 2012. Enjoy your Summer Olympics, humans!

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