Junior E-Men on Patrol : First Person: Kids are hounding parents on environmentalism.

Istayed up late and had to get upway too early. So I snarled at the alarm clock, stumbled to the bathroom, squinted to find my toothbrush and turned on the water full force. Even without my contact lenses in, I had no trouble reading the big letters on the note tapedsmackin the middle of the bathroom mirror. “Yo, Mom! Remember to turn off water while brushing teeth.”

It is barely 7 a.m. and I already am in trouble--big trouble--with the Earth Police. And I have a hunch this early morning water-conservation directive won’t be the last I’ll hear today about my shortcomings as an ecologically minded citizen.

Last spring’s Earth Day, with its save-the-planet hoopla and recycling particulars, may be a shadowy memory for most people. But not for those of us who live with the self-appointed Junior Earth Police Force. I should know. My son, Shaun, seems to be a sergeant on his way to five-star general. He’s 11 and he’s adamant: We must do our part.

Conserving water is just scratching the surface. “We gotta recycle,” Shaun tells me during a spin through the market. And what better way to start, he questions, than to buy lots and lots of soda in recyclable cans? I veto that idea, but he’s got more.

“Great idea, Mom. Let’s put a few bricks in the toilet tank. It will save gallons of water every day.” It would. But our house is about a half-century old, with original plumbing, I remind him. We’re lucky it works most of the time, without bricks jimmying the works. Later that day, I discover an alternate conservation plan is in effect. Unable to flush the toilet, I remove the tank lid, ready as usual to jiggle the whatchamacallit. Then I see the real hang-up: three Ziploc bags filled with water and getting in the way of the flushing mechanism. They are not bricks, you understand.

Lately, I cannot seem to get through the day, much less the house, without a reminder that I am pretty blase about saving the planet.

I find a Department of Water and Power brochure listing energy-saving tips right next to the microwave oven, without a doubt the biggest energy-gobbler we have. There is a bagful of apple juice cans, waiting to be recycled, outside the back door. I got a dismal score on the “Water Audit” quiz Shaun brought home from school, even after fudging on the questions about taking quick showers and proper vegetable rinsing time. There is the constant sound of dripping faucets, brought to my attention day after day.

Almost overnight, I have developed a reputation as an environmental slob. And it’s undeserved. After all, I was the first on our block to pound a “Support Slow Growth” poster in the front lawn. I was a field-trip chaperon (on a visit to the water plant, to boot) for my son’s sixth-grade class. And I seem to remember it was my idea to put the dog’s water bowl under the dripping back-yard faucet. But my habits of lengthy showers and negligent trash sorting (I don’t take time to separate glass and newspapers) make it all for naught.

For solace, I check out the experiences of friends with kids. Could this be an aberration, a case of a single cell in my son’s gray matter gone temporarily awry from watching one too many public service announcements?

It seems not. Earth Police are everywhere, I discover after just a few inquiries.

“Matthew asks me to cut the plastic rings that hold the six-packs of cola together before I throw them in the trash,” says Idelle about her 6-year-old Earth Policeman. “He’s concerned that little animals in the landfills will get stuck in them and choke. So I do.”

Bob hurries through his workday so he can get his 5-year-old daughter, Ashley, to her weekly violin lesson across town. When they’re bumper to bumper, she looks at him sweetly and says, “We really should be taking the bus, Dad.” Through gritted teeth, he reminds her that sometimes daily schedules--and details such as earning a living--take their toll on conservation habits.

Andi says she can’t buy hair spray without a lengthy label-reading lesson. “No aerosols, Mom,” pleads her 10-year-old daughter, Jessica. Another day, as Andi washed down the bricked area in the back yard, her daughter observed, “You can be arrested for this, you know.”

I ring up Richard Coss, who is listed in the UC Davis experts’ directory as an environmental psychologist. Surely, he is a man with some answers. “Why are our kids turning into Earth Police,” I ask, “and why am I always getting ticketed?”

He ponders the question but can’t provide concrete answers. He’s been too busy on his own home front to give the matter much professional thought. It seems his son, now 19, became an Earth Policeman “with no major prompting from me” at about age 14. “He doesn’t want to own a car,” Coss says. But Coss’ daughter, now 17, regularly forgets to turn off the lights when she leaves the room. She leaves air-conditioners and other energy-gobblers running, too. “In the same family,” Coss concludes, speaking strictly anecdotally, “you can have siblings who are entirely different (in their conservation habits).”

Interesting, but not much help to me because Shaun’s an only child. Maybe I could invite Coss’ daughter to visit, serving as a kind of bad example/buffer to make me ecologically preferable?

I ring up Vern Bengtson , a USC gerontologist and sociologist who has studied the generation gap. He’s not in, but his administrative coordinator, Linda Hall, sympathizes. Her son David, 11, is a charter member of the Earth Police Force. “We’re not allowed to eat tuna at our house anymore,” Hall says, recalling the edict came after a school science lesson about dolphin killings. “And we haven’t hosed down the driveway in months.”

I phone yet another expert, psychologist Chaytor Mason, a USC associate professor of human factors. Blame this whole police-force phenomenon on an inherent tendency of youth to go overboard, he suggests. “Young people are by nature extremists,” Mason says. “And this environmentalism is part of the extremism. Kids have an ‘all or nothing’ philosophy. Every pilot has to be a fighter pilot.”

One-upmanship--the child vs. parent variety--plays a role in their eagerness to become Earth Police, too, Mason suspects. “There is part of every kid who wants to outsmart their parents,” he says. What better way than to tell your Mom that washing the car at home uses, did you happen to know, 150 gallons of water?

One of Mason’s colleagues, Irene Goldenberg, a UCLA family therapist, also makes me feel less deplorable. “Parents don’t give themselves enough credit,” she says. These Earth Police, she believes, have gotten their sense of concern and their values from their parents, even though planet-saving specifics may have come from teachers or television.

Coss of UC Davis notices that even the most adamant Earth Police aren’t perfect. Kids who rant and rave about aerosol cans and the need for “miser” light bulbs one minute will beg you the next to drive them across town to the mall, stopping to pick up a half-dozen or so friends. They’ll play video games for hours, with nary a thought to the kilowatt expense. They never stop to figure the energy expenditure, say, of watching Pee-Wee Herman.

Just knowing the underlying psychosocial dynamics of the Earth Police makes me feel better. But it’s still not making my mornings any easier.

How do parents live through this Earth Police phase?

Mason, whose now-grown daughter went through her own environmental mania two decades ago, has some simple suggestions. “Know your position, support it, and keep your sense of humor.” Wise words, I think. Advice that has moved me to the nirvana of ecological equilibrium. I’ll call the plumber in the morning, but I won’t sort trash. I’ll turn off lights, but I won’t give up my microwave. I’ll join the Earth Police Force, but I want the evening shift. Just don’t bug me in the morning. Once I’ve had some coffee, I do some of my best thinking in the shower.

Just yesterday, soon after I turned on the water, I wondered about the bright yellow used on Bart Simpson T-shirts. I wonder if it contains cadmium, the toxic heavy metal used in paint pigments that environmentalists want banned before it ends up in our drinking water.