Hormones Are the Same, but Weapons Have Changed

As I travel around Orange County under cover of darkness, tapping people on the shoulder and saying, “Is there anything bugging you?” I generally get one of two responses.

By far the most frequent comment is, “Don’t ever come up behind me and tap me on the shoulder again.” After I assure them, they usually say something about the escalating nature of anger and violence in society, especially among young people.

I’m way past shockproof when it comes to hearing about kids and violence. It seems that the only form of settling arguments we haven’t reported on are sword fights.

When contemplating the decline of society, then, oldsters such as myself can’t help but think back to our childhoods, when harmony and nonviolence were standards of behavior. When your biggest fear at school was a pop quiz on a Thomas Hardy novel. When you hoped you had enough money for an extra carton of milk. When a friendly word or an arm around your buddy could defuse any volatile situation.

Yeah, right.

Monroe Junior High in the early 1960s in Omaha, Neb.--right in the middle of a kind and gentle heartland that was the America we used to know. The way we would like it to be again.

I’m having a flashback and, guess what, it’s not what we would like to think.

Here’s the way it really was:

Two guys would be walking down the hallway and bump shoulders. No self-respecting guy could let stand an indignity of such magnitude. So, one of the guys would say, “Choose!” which was the equivalent of throwing down the gauntlet. The other kid was required to say, “Accept” or face ridicule.

After-school Friday fistfights in the parking lot across the street were a staple of the week’s activities. The two warriors would lead their entourages with them to the battleground, much like prizefighters today coming from the dressing room into the ring.

Forthwith, bare-knuckle brawling began. The sound of fist on face didn’t bother me then; thinking about it now repulses me.

Had it been socially acceptable, I gladly would have walked down the hallway at school wearing a sandwich board with the inscription: “I’m terribly sorry. I don’t fight.”

That wasn’t an option and so, like everyone else, I took my chances with the school toughs. I got jostled a few times and my locker mate stole my colored pencils and I was too chicken to make him give them back, but at least I never headlined the card in the parking lot.

What comes to mind in looking back to those days, though, is that going to school with the fear of getting into a fight wasn’t all that unusual.

While I survived junior high, the memory of one off-campus incident now amuses me.

I was walking home one day and saw another kid approaching on the sidewalk. Horror of horrors, we were on a “direct collide” course. Neither of us moved as we approached and, in the middle of a quiet residential street, we bumped shoulders.

We were total strangers, but the Code of Budding Manhood had to be enforced. I dropped my books right on the spot and turned to face him. He also stopped, clearly ready to duel.

Believe me, even at 13 I was a lover and not a fighter. Refusing to fight, however, wasn’t an option. I sized him up and according to my rough calculations figured he would have disposed of me in something under a minute.

But as we two Spartans prepared to fight in the middle of a quiet street on a lovely afternoon over absolutely nothing, I uttered the immortal line: “Box or wrestle?”

For whatever reason, and I prefer to think it’s because God watches over us all, the question upset the cadence of the event. Instead of responding to my stall tactic, he said something like, “Oh, forget it,” and huffed away.

So, I lived to fight again. Thirty years later, the occasion still hasn’t arisen.

If there’s a point to all this, it’s that we may be condemning today’s kids unfairly. Yes, many of them seem to have a penchant for violence and creating fear. That same climate of violence and fear existed 30 years ago, too, at good old Monroe Junior High. We were quick to fight, all too willing to inflict pain.

What’s different is the firepower. What we settled with our fists, today’s kids settle with weapons. A fistfight didn’t make news; a shooting does.

So, are kids more violent than we were? I don’t know the answer.

What it does, though, is beg a familiar question: What would modern-day society be like if people didn’t have guns?

Don’t get me started on that. I was just thinking out loud.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.