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Published on 01/26/1998 All articles from this issue

It's a puzzlement

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By Mary Cristy

A View from the Hills

In "The King and I" the late Yul Brynner, as ruler of Siam, bewails his "confusion of conclusion" he "concluded long ago."

His soliloquy concerning questions to which a lifetime of soul searching has yielded no satisfactory answers ends with a plaintive: "BUT! IS A PUZZLEMENT!"

Puzzlement is our lot too, as we consider life's imponderables and nourish the hope that knowing we understand nothing could be the first faint glimmering of wisdom.

We regard with puzzlement the sexual harassment charge that involved an affectionate 7-year-old Brooklyn schoolboy who stole an innocent kiss because he liked his classmate in her new corduroy skirt. His five-day suspension was reduced to three, but not before New York's Mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, the Board of Education, and parents of kisser and kissee were embroiled in a costly, time-consuming hassle - after which plans were made by the board to "review the sexual harassment policy and see if it needs to be made age-specific."

The 7-year-old menace may have taken his cue from a 6-year-old North Carolina lecher who was banned from an ice cream social for a similar offense a week earlier.

At the other end of the spectrum we have convicted killer Larry Singleton, who, after having brutally murdered and dismembered one of his two young victims, was paroled from a California penal colony to relocate to Florida, where he soon found another unfortunate woman to torture and strangle.

Shortly thereafter, a Nevada court decreed that a 9-year-old from Las Vegas should have been canny enough to decline when a friendly construction worker invited the lad and his chums, returning home from school, to scratch their names and leave their hand and footprints in a 20-foot section of a newly laid concrete sidewalk. Gleefully, the boys complied.

A few weeks later, following a complaint from the contractor, the 9-year-old was arrested, strip-searched, and read his rights, before being placed in a holding cell with two older offenders.

Although his mother explained "he had no idea what an attorney is," the boy had signed an admission-of-guilt form and waived his right to legal representation. A Nevada attorney concluded, "That's a lot of mental anguish to subject a mother to," and took the case pro bono.

When it comes to letting the punishment fit the crime, something is seriously out of kilter with a system that targets children and allows a convicted killer with a rap sheet as long as a fully grown rattlesnake to walk.

Happily, the trend toward punishing juveniles may yield to the common sense evidenced in Boston, where officials judged the proverbial ounce of prevention is indeed worth a pound of cure.

Setting a standard that other cities may feel impelled to follow, law enforcement and nonprofit agencies opted to initiate after-school activities, team sports, and job-training for "at risk" youngsters.

For a remarkable 2 l/2 years no juvenile murder was committed in Boston and, though one shooting death marred that record late last year, Boston remains a bellwether for a safer, saner approach to juvenile crime. In Boston neighborhoods police officers are a visible, welcome presence. The dramatic drop in street crime bespeaks the wisdom of proper guidance and caring for our most precious resource - our children.

Adults have an obligation to provide children with worthy role models. When we make asses of ourselves by locking up innocents, or chastise a child for a spontaneous gesture of affection, we do ourselves and our children a disservice.

We could choose to behave like intelligent Bostonians. We could begin to replace nonsense with common sense. We could start funding more youth centers and playgrounds that would, in time, preclude the need for more prisons.

And we could try smiling, instead of frowning upon the sweet affection of children for other children, and applaud instead of censure their little acts of love.

Mary Cristy is a Los Altos Hills-based free-lance writer and longtimecontributor to theTown Crier.