There's a story this morning about a Girl Scout, selling cookies, who was robbed of twenty-eight dollars yesterday in Savannah, Georgia. She was ten years old and the thief was twelve. Cannot make this stuff up.
When you live in a culture where sneakers (I don't care what you call them in your house, in my house Mom made us put them on when we came home from school and changed clothes to go outside and play) can cost over two hundred dollars a pair and are so heavily advertised as the item to own that young people kill one another and steal the sneakers from the body, robbing a Girl Scout no longer raises an eyebrow of incredulity.
How did this happen? And don't blame television-okay let me rephrase that: don't blame television entirely. Same for the school system, the neighborhood, the politicians--there's plenty of blame to go around. What was it Roxy Music sang, "In Every Dream Home a Heartache"? Sounds more right now than it did then.
Don't know about you but some mornings I have trouble meeting the gaze of the codger staring back at me in the mirror as I ready myself for another day as a Grown-up in the Real World. I was raised to believe there are sins of omission and commission and I fear the road to a very warm place is paved with almost equal amounts of those sins and the best of intentions (and, no, by warm place I do not mean Miami, or Savannah, Georgia, for that matter).
After I shake my head in dismay and disbelief reading a story like Grand Larceny Girl Scout, what should I do-what will you do and what can we do? And my President tells me I need to be on my guard against terrorists. I guess for some folks, everything else is just buttermilk.
-bill kenny
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