Intelligence prevails in Simi Valley, despite its proximity to Los Angeles. : Back to Teen-age Island

The nature of our species is to test limits, whether they exist in starry space or in the living room of a Valencia house, where my 4-year-old friend Travis presses to discover how many times he can bowl over his little sister before mama comes crashing down on him.

We reach beyond our dreams at whatever risk and learn from consequence as much about what not to do as what to do.

Travis learned quickly, for instance, that he can only knock over Shana so many times with impunity. The limit stands at four.

The structure of limits is what I wrote about last summer when the teen-agers of Simi Valley, kicked out of one hangout because they rioted, wanted to mass their stereo-equipped mini-trucks on the City Hall parking lot to, presumably, raise a similar amount of hell in a sanctioned environment.

To the credit of the City Council, they were refused, and the lesson in limits began.

I, of course, jumped right in at the time and, in the spirit of moderation that has come to characterize my approach, called the kids stupid, indulgent, inconsiderate and, as I recall, sex-crazed.

Oh, yes, and lazy.

I suggested that they all be shipped off to Teen-age Island for the summer, whereupon they would be continually forced to confront “their own bored and sated mirror images until perception is achieved and a balance struck between youth and fantasy.”

I can’t believe I wrote that.

Neither could a lot of parents who communicated their displeasure, including one father, apparently an ex-Marine, who said he was going to come down and swing me over his head by my stacking swivel.

Only those who have been in the Corps can appreciate the implications of the threat. It was probably as close as I have ever come to retracting in terror.

I explained to the man that I was simply testing my own limits and convinced him I was small and afraid and not worth a stretch in Soledad prison, where homosexual rape is a constant threat to ex-Marines.

Which brings me, however circuitously, to today.

The teen-age mini-truckers, led by kids who somehow manage to be neither stupid nor lazy, petitioned the City Council again, were given another chance and began gathering Sunday nights in a school-district parking lot.

There has not been a single case of mayhem, armed robbery, murder or criminal bestiality since the Sunday sessions began.

The mini-truckers, in fact, have behaved like nuns. Noisy nuns, but nuns, nevertheless.

If that were not remarkable enough, the lesson of limits, encompassing both rights and responsibilities, seems to have proliferated. Other young people responded with equal intelligence to a ban on riding skateboards on city streets.

Fifty of them attended a City Council meeting to protest the ban, and the council, acting with the equanimity that has become a hallmark of its style, is working to find a place where the kids can skateboard without either knocking anyone down or running the risk of flat-boarding under the wheels of a milk truck.

And then came Simi Valley High.

Principal David Ellis, with very good reason, imposed some rules at the start of the fall semester that involved shortened lunch periods, locked bathrooms and restricted parking privileges.

Students didn’t like the new rules, but instead of smashing windows or taking over a classroom, a handful of leaders, tutored by at least two teachers, met with Ellis to make their position clear.

And they backed the meeting with a peaceful demonstration of about 300 other students who picketed, chanted, demanded their rights and still managed to shoulder their primary school responsibility by not missing a class.

To say that Ellis, a man of exceptional grace and intelligence, was proud would be to characterize the Nobel Prize as a pat on the back. Superlatives matter here.

Ellis talked for an hour one day about his students’ leadership abilities, their good sense, their acceptance of responsibilities and the lessons of an orderly society that ought to apply far beyond the campus.

As a result of their activism, Ellis lengthened the lunch hour and established a permanent forum to discuss solutions to other problems that resulted in his initial restrictions.

The young people not only got involved, but enhanced the interests of others. A student newspaper is in the works, and a new era of student-teacher communications has been opened.

All of this comes about not simply because kids on their own suddenly discovered God and the Constitution, but because a climate of intelligence prevails in Simi Valley, despite its proximity to Los Angeles.

Moderation exists where leadership sets the standard, and that happened in suburbia, with its City Council, its high school principal, its teachers and . . . well . . . the kids, too.

I am so impressed by the results that I might even be forced to temper future references to teen-agers as dumb and lazy, and I swear to you the stacking-swivel threat has nothing to do with it.

I could get by without one if I had to.