Youth Just Wanna Have Fun

Even though there must be some reason for institution of the curfew law that, when enforced, interferes with the life, liberty and happiness of usually blameless individuals, some things should be considered more important--like letting the young have fun.

I am a Los Angeles teen who fully appreciates the value of being young, namely, that one can be free and have fun without having to keep busy procuring the necessities of existence. I think that anything so against freedom and exuberance as this curfew law is something to be resented and not to be obeyed or enforced. Just “because it is written” or “because it’s the law” are not reasons enough to restrain the life and liberty of the young. Society needs to stop messing with us like that.

Youth is perhaps the one time in life when living is its own ideal; experience rests in the “sheer joy of being” as opposed to “false modes of being,” as philosopher Herbert Marcuse called them. Youth should be regarded as sacred and not be so restricted and repressed.

Los Angeles’ curfew law is reminiscent of the curfew that existed in the Middle Ages; that was around sundown, when people had to put out lights, cover fires and get off the streets until daybreak. The current law says that anyone under 18 is not to hang out unsupervised after 10 p.m. If it is enforced, does that mean that for about the first quarter of our lives, we are not to appreciate nearly half of the day?

The evening is the great time; how can they (and they are over 30) tell us kids that we can’t experience it, especially in summertime when we’re out of school? That’s not just silly, it’s infuriating, especially for those of us most affected--and who had nothing to do with it: kids. All such a law can do is arouse resentment for society’s repressive forces and get a lot of young people in trouble, just because they were out after dark, living life.

Too much of what I see in society is anti-youth, anti-insouciance, anti-fun. Too often we get kicked out and away from storefront areas where there is a concentration of people, simply because we are not buying anything, just hanging out. Hanging out is what kids have been doing for ages. The only time they seem to appreciate our presence is when we are consuming (to their profit). So where does society expect us to go? To watch TV? Really, it’s as if they’ve left us nowhere to go.

Many measures taken for security ultimately inhibit youth and free chasers of experience. That this is necessary for our safety may be society’s most lamentable aspect. But we must remember that what is living (we, the people) is more important than what is stationary and structured (society’s order), and what is real is more important than what is written. It is our responsibility as human beings to make allowance for the joy of being, for real human sentiment, and to avoid arbitrarily messing with life, with free expression, with kids out having fun.

It is necessary to disregard a restriction such as this curfew law; to ignore it and to refrain from enforcing it. Those whose “duty” it is to enforce might realize that they have an even higher calling: a debt to the human race and its freedom and feeling. No one should ever be simply a servant to an implacable order ruled by nonspecific precepts. And even so, aren’t we still entitled to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?” Yes, but that part of what is written may have little meaning anymore.