Adults Should Confront Out-Of-Line Kids

The boy, seated with a friend at a shopping mall, wore a black T-shirt and a baseball cap over his straight, longish hair.

He looked about 13. The message printed on the back of his shirt was much older:

“(Expletive) you.”

In the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, much has been made of the deteriorating tenor of public discourse in America. President Clinton and others have asserted that virulent and threatening verbal attacks increasingly are being made on the U.S. government and its employees and elected officials.

Democrats point the finger for much of the current nastiness at certain Republicans and farright media personalities - who deny it but know it’s true. Republicans remind Democrats that not so long ago, the chief purveyors of governmentaimed hate speech were certain Democrats and those on the far left - who would rather ignore how they have helped lower the discourse to its current subterranean levels.

But who today takes responsibility for anything?

Perhaps we all need reminding of what the boy at the mall proved: Intimidating, bullying language is an indelible part of the real public discourse - between neighbors, spouses and even the smallest children. Today, any trip outside the home may be a foray into a verbal guerrilla combat zone.

You never know where the hateful language will slap you.

Such as in the lobby of my son’s suburban elementary school. Recently, I watched a girl of about 10, her long, blond hair streaming, whip around, glare at another student and screech the expletive worn by the boy at the mall.

Once, a little boy was cursing so vociferously that I asked, “Excuse me, but did you know some people don’t like hearing those words?” He just stared.

Certainly, my habit of confronting - courteously, respectfully - kids who publicly use obscenities is unusual.

My friend Avis has raised it to an art form.

A thirtysomething reporter, wife and mother of a toddler, Avis is known in her neighborhood for helping young folks watch their language. T-shirts are Avis’ specialty.She saw one recently that said, “Your Mama’s a Ho,” and was being worn by a boy who looked about 14. But he was moving too fast for her to ask, “Why would you wear that?”

I remember the time a boy, about 17, passed her on the street in a shirt that screamed, “SHUT UP, BITCH.”

Approaching him with a friend, she smiled, introduced herself and said, “We were wondering about your shirt.”

“He blushed … as humbly as a kid in Sunday school who hadn’t read the lesson,” Avis recalls. “He was polite but couldn’t explain why he’d wear a shirt insulting to every woman. … He promised he’d never wear it again.”

Many adults are too scared to challenge kids. Not Avis.

“I’m a crime reporter, and the reason some of these kids are walking around with Uzis is because adults are afraid to say anything. Part of adults’ function is to say, ‘You shouldn’t do this.”’

So when a neighborhood youth sported a pulleddown ski mask on a 70-degree day, Avis told him, “You’re wearing that to intimidate people. … But if somebody called the cops on you, you’d say it was because you’re a black man in America. … Why try to look like you’re doing something wrong?”

“They think I’m a trip,” she says with a laugh, “but the kids come over to visit. … I think they want … some guidance.”

Admittedly, a coattail pulled here, an attitude checked there, is small stuff. But sometimes we’re so focused on our monumental problems - kids who kill or who join drug gangs or hate groups - that we ignore what we can do: Offer the advice that might help one kid never to buy a gun or use words that could goad someone else into using one.

Avis says her father told her that when he had misbehaved as a boy, “Everybody beat his behind - his teachers, aunt, neighbors. … I’m not for spanking, but we need that village atmosphere now. Children should know there are consequences.”She sighs. “But I couldn’t get to the boy on the escalator.”

So I confronted the boy at the mall. When I asked why he’d wear a shirt that said ‘the hell with you’ to every man, woman and child who read it, he shrugged, saying he just likes the heavy-metal band pictured on the shirt’s front.

“Does your mom mind you wearing this?” I asked. “No,” he replied.

So much for our public discourse. Still, I hoped he’d think about what I’d said - and about what he, through his shirt, was saying.

It’s been more than a week since President Clinton’s moving speech to Oklahoma bombing victims’ families, but I can’t forget one line: “You have lost too much, but you haven’t lost everything. You haven’t lost America.”

Not yet. But it’s going to take everybody’s effort to save our 260-million-person village.

xxxx