Believe it or not this coming weekend is the last weekend before Labor Day here in the US which means the teenagers will be heading back to school and not a moment too soon. Even though some of you are in different regions, you may experience the same thing with the summer months ending and school beginning.You see, I live in a pretty nice neighborhood down here in South Jersey that is about 12 years old. Our subdivision connects to a couple other ones and it seems as if the young teenagers were quite bored this summer as they caused havoc to some of the neighbors. It's pretty much the teenage vandalism sort of things (knocking over mailboxes, stealing bikes and lawn furniture, etc.) but I guess when it's happening to you it's not minor. To top it off, our township has a 10:00pm curvew for minors under the age of 18 but it's not enforced that strongly. To fuel the fire, there's this area behind one of the other subdivisions that they call "The Pit" which consists of dirt mounds where people ride their 4-wheel quads and dirtbikes. But at night, it becomes a hangout for the teenagers and the cause of many phone calls to the police authorities. So much, that our community has now formed a neighborhood watch program to keep an eye out for anything that is peculiar. My partner and I do patrols after 10pm each night while we're walking our dogs so it's a perfect opportunity to be the eyes and ears for the police. In the 3 weeks since we started patrolling the neighborhoods, we personally have only had to telephone the police once when it was well past 10:00pm on a weeknight. This was because we came across a group of about 6 - 8 teenagers making lots of loud noise and tossing glass bottles across one of our streets in our neighborhood. So the police were called and that was the end of that.
By no means am I an advocate of vandalism, but I have to be honest and say that if I had had a place like "The Pit" to hang out in when I was a teenager, I would have taken advantage of it also. The difference is that I would have respected my elders as well as their property and would never have caused damage or made too much noise. So in a way I feel sorry for the teenagers who don't seem to have anything to do to keep them busy. Heck, with the extremely high property taxes that we pay to live here, I think our township should offer activities that could be both eductational and stimulating to keep the teenagers occupied and off of the streets at night. So...are the teenagers true vagrants or are they sadly misunderstood?
I'm sure everyone has their own opinion and perhaps it depends on the degree of vandalizm that they cause. In any case, if they ever start to vandalize MY property I'll lump them into the vagrant category and they'll become my public enemy #1.
Ciao,
VINNIE
