Young Minds

 

Packs of kids hang out up and down downtown Lawrence.

Too young to drive. Too young to vote.

Sex and alcohol barely beyond their reach.

School their job.

Their lessons: showing up on time

and being quiet.

Here along Mass. Street they laugh and step all over each other’s words.

They wander directionless –

supervising themselves.

Some practice that trick of popping their skateboard up into the air

and trying to land on it with both feet when it descends.

One day I happened upon a cluster of kids,

hanging around the Peace Pole in South Park.

A boy was jerking the pole back and forth,

as if to loosen it and pull it out.

A girl was kicking at it.

I walked over.

“Kind of a dumb thing you’re doing,” I said.

“That’s offensive,” a smart-mouthed girl replied.

“Is it?” I asked.

“Not really,” she answered.

I continued to chide them,

more with my presense as an adult,

than any words they might have heard.

Then the girl said,

“We’re just kids, we have small minds.”

“That’s not much of an excuse,” I said,

as I walked away.

But what I wish I could have said was:

“Take care – and have fun.”

But they would likely have taken

even that wistful blessing as more admonition –

not gentle guidance.

They’re already recognizing that

small minds tend more often to occur in grownups.

And they can’t be expected to understand

the distinction that, rather than small,

kid’s minds are open -

if sometimes empty -

as they linger between innocence and responsibility.

But it would be useless

to try warn these kids,

killing what little time they have left,

that all the things they now think they’re missing out on

will rob them of their bliss.

Yesterday, as I walked past what used to be Penny Annies,

a former magnet for after-school kids,

I saw a boy hit a crack with the wheels of his skateboard

and sprawl headlong off onto the sidewalk.

It occurred to me that he was lucky to avoid breaking his neck.

His friends turned and skated back to him,

laughing.

“Take care – and have fun,”

I said, wordlessly, as I walked on, unnoticed.