Measuring Kids by the Lawn Mower Yardstick
Joan Martin of Woodland Hills e-mails:
OK, so kids are not mowing lawns, but my teenage neighbor, John Carnes, spent his time last year teaching this senior citizen (not old lady) to be computer literate. He was incredibly patient, methodical, complimentary and professional (he kept his frustration hidden). I suspect this is as good a path to responsible adulthood as mowing lawns. Actually, I am sure it is better.
Well, fine. So maybe they’re not all spoiled rotten brats. Maybe they aren’t all lyin’, cheatin’, burglarizin’ little juvenile delinquents. Maybe some small fraction of These Kids Today are more likely to help a little old lady--oops, I mean a female senior citizen--walk across the information superhighway than to steal her purse.
But here it is, one week after the arrest of more than 15 Santa Clarita teenagers, allegedly members of a suburban burglary ring, had me ranting about These Kids Today. So far I’ve yet to hear any heartwarming stories about young people mowing the neighbors’ lawns for extra spending money. Not in these parts, anyway.
Sure, we’ve got honor students aplenty and the occasional Eagle Scout. Joan Martin, 69, tells me that her next-door neighbor was 14 when she hired him to be her computer tutor. He was paid, she says, “slave wages” along with her “eternal gratitude.”
If Norman Rockwell were alive today, maybe he’d offer up an image of a slackerish-looking lad in a baseball cap turned backward teaching a befuddled oldster Windows ’98. Through the real window, meanwhile, an immigrant gardener (legal or otherwise) labors with a leaf blower (legal or otherwise).
Those mean suburban streets of Santa Clarita had me yearning nostalgically for my own “Leave It to Beaver” hometown in Orange County. Back then, when I wasn’t walking 10 miles barefoot through snow to school, I had a newspaper route for three months and even mowed a neighbor’s lawn once or twice. OK, I’m kidding about the snow, but plenty of preteens and teens mowed lawns and washed cars for extra cash.
Last week I was tempted to make an offer: Two tickets to Universal Studios for the first young person here in greater L.A. who could document that he or she earned regular spending money by mowing neighbors’ lawns.
What the heck: I’ll make the offer now. It would be worth it just to meet one.
Dave Bell of La Crescenta says the good news is that he knows such young people still exist. The bad news: If you want a neighborhood kid to mow your lawn, you may have to move to Tulsa, Okla.
Bell said he recently returned to Los Angeles after living one year in a “low-rent” section of Tulsa:
The next-door neighbor kid, a 10-year-old, did make lots of money mowing neighbors’ lawns. Overall, the people in Tulsa were so polite it took me two months just to quit suspecting that they wanted something from me. It was pretty simple to tell what made the difference between Tulsa and L.A. . . . You could almost smell the family atmosphere in Tulsa, it was so thick.
The divorce rate may be high in Oklahoma--perhaps, Bell says, because so many people marry young--but on the whole, Bell says: Beav’s suburbia lives on in the low-rent areas of Tulsa.
But out here in big, bad L.A., it’s another story. Carol Rudes, a Northridge mom, said my curmudgeonly kvetching had a familiar ring:
Your column today echoed some sentiments I am constantly hearing voiced by the elder male in the household--”when I was a kid”--yada yada. . . . Yeah, like my 15-year-old is going to mow lawns in Northridge . . . SURE.
Well, why Tulsa and not Northridge?
Rudes continues: The sad part is what do kids in that 13-15-year-old bracket do to earn money? There is not a lot out there--my 15-year-old went around many places with an actual RESUME this past summer and, unfortunately, “no cigar,” as they say.
Of all the correspondence I received regarding that column, none was more encouraging that the plea from Linda X. Nguyen, a representative of These Kids Today:
I probably speak for all the teenagers--being one myself--when I ask you not to judge us all on one little incident in time. All teens are not “spoiled rotten brats.” And I assure you, even if we were going to “hell in a handbasket,” I strongly feel that it’s not all because of “These Kids Today.”
Even though we teenagers of today don’t mow the neighbor’s lawn, or do chores (most of us don’t, but some do), it doesn’t mean that we’re good-for-nothing brats. Besides, people of today would never pay some kid from down the street to mow their lawn or baby-sit for them. And I bet you wouldn’t either. Nobody wants a KID to do anything. . . .
Everyone thinks we’re worthless and stupid. And it’s people like you that make people believe things like that. I’m telling you, not all teenagers are worthless and without manners. . . . You don’t know what it’s like to be a teen of this age. . . .
Well, OK, so maybe I laid it on a bit thick. Geez, I was just kidding. (Sort of.)
At any rate, Miss Nguyen makes a good point. Perhaps These Kids Today are caught in a Catch-22.
A friend of mine says he’d happily hire a neighborhood kid to mow his law if only one would offer. But do any of the kids think a grown-up would give them the chance?
Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com. Please include a phone number.
