Where can a person go when school’s out and he’s too dumb or lazy to find a job? : Life on Teen-age Island

I am intrigued by a story out of Simi Valley about a group of teen-agers who want sanctioned use of the City Hall parking lot as a nightly gathering place to get drunk, have sex in the back of their Toyota pickups and beat each other’s brains out.

Well, actually, what they say they want is a place to, y’know, hang out and play their car stereos, which is what teen-agers do best, since those are activities that do not require either an ability to think or to communicate, except on the most primitive levels.

We all know, however, that beer and sex would ultimately dominate the evening if Simi Valley were foolish enough to allow teen-age use of the lot without first surrounding it with NFL linebackers armed with shotguns and pit bulls.

But the City Council wisely said no, which is one more reason to regard Simi Valley’s governing body with respect. This was the same group, you might recall, that said no to Sylvester Stallone when he wanted to shut down the freeway through their city during peak commute hours for one of his stupid movies.

I have wondered since then if a deal could be struck that would bring the entire Simi Valley council to Los Angeles and, in return, give Simi Valley the L.A. City Council, the Dodgers, the Raiders and $400 billion in cash. We would still be ahead of the game.

The teen-agers said they were asking for the City Hall parking lot, dude, because they have no place to go and “meeting at parking lots is cheap and fun.”

Now then, do we know why the little dears have no place to go? Because 200 of them rioted at their last hangout, a Burger King restaurant. They slashed each other with broken bottles, knocked each other down with their mini-trucks, set fires and damaged other cars before order could be restored.

Cops, by training and instinct, do not take kindly to that sort of behavior, so they told the kids in effect that, if they ever returned en masse to Burger King, that portion of their anatomy upon which they sit might be in danger of abrupt ascendancy. In simpler terms, they’d get their behinds kicked.

After the request for turning the City Hall parking lot into Teeny Heaven was turned down, a councilman reminded the young people that assembling at Burger King in large and noisy groups was unlawful. So what did the kids do when the meeting ended? They gathered at Burger King.

Later, they sold missiles to Iran and slipped money to the contras.

However, notwithstanding distorted precedents as national policy, the kids do have a point. Where can a person go when school is out and he’s too dumb or lazy to find a job?

I’ll grant you that teen-agers usually manage to keep busy during the summer by beating up on homeless people or by causing such havoc at community festivals that they are immediately canceled, but quite obviously that isn’t enough.

The kids need a specific place to congregate, where brutish conduct is confined to within specific geographic limits, thereby sparing the real world their peculiar and often violent behavior.

I have some modest suggestions.

I want to say first, however, that I don’t dislike teen-agers. I have had three of my own and was probably a teen-ager myself once, although I can’t remember when.

I do recall drinking beer on occasion in high school and I do recall thinking that unlimited sex and a cool car were probably the highest achievements of a civilized world. I wasn’t smart but I was normal.

Not once, however, did I entertain a desire to beat up on hobos or set fire to cars or shoot someone in another neighborhood or rip the clothes off women walking down the street or plot my stepfather’s murder, though God knows he probably deserved it.

We didn’t need a place to go because we went wherever everyone else went, the difference being that we didn’t riot when we got there, and were thus allowed to return.

But then, I guess, it’s a different world now with a different set of attitudes, and perhaps today’s kids do need a haven of some sort for three months a year.

Those of less charitable nature have suggested to me that teens without jobs be imprisoned for the summer or confined to state mental hospitals or sent to forced labor camps. One wants them smuggled into Iran for religious restructuring, where heads are chopped off for the slightest moral iniquity.

But I am not that severe, and suggest simply that they be shipped to a kind of Teen-age Island where excessive behavior is a way of life and where, day after day, they are forced to deal with their bored and sated mirror images until perception is achieved and a balance struck between youth and sanity.

It was that way once a long time ago, and I see no reason why, even today, people with the bodies of adults and the brains of pigeons ought to be able to dominate our lives.

I hope Simi Valley hangs tough and teaches lessons everyone can follow. Maybe we can even get back to liking our kids again.