A few days ago HBO was airing a special on the youth of today in regards to the age old sex, drugs, and alcohol. It was Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, and I will be damned if the crappy HBO.com website can lend a hand in finding a link.

There were a few parts that struck a chord with me, stuff that generally bothered me in some way or another. Usually it would be the “damaged goods” syndrome, where a young girl is taken advantage of by a older guy, seeking something that her family was not able to give her. This time however, it was something entirely different that got me going.

It started with a father and his son, his son of course was acting out a little, general misbehavior, drinking, drugs, pretty normal stuff for kids. We all did it, we all outgrew it, those who did not, have deeper issues anyway. So here we have this father, who refused to talk to his kid if he interrupted him or raised his voice. If these two rules were fractured, it was off to his room for 45 minutes of grounding.

What got me, is how in the hell could anyone take this father serious. Imagine sitting on the couch, with your 50 year old dad, with a full porn star mustache, shorts that make my boxers look like clam-diggers, and a pink golf shirt to top it off. Are you fucking serious, no wonder your kid does not listen to you, you are a total pussy, an embarrassment. Take a peek in the mirror, if you look like a washed up porn star, sans the usual arm candy, you suck, don’t even bother trying to discipline your kid, you failed yourself, you certainly won’t be looked up to by your kid.

While the pink shirt fruit cake was amusing, the main issue that I wanted to cover is how schools and parents treat the underdog. There was a kid, probably 15 years old, had his own identity, but was pretty much an outcast. He wore the same clothes day in and day out, dressed somewhat like a cowboy, and was pretty anti-social. Of course, the “cool kids” can sniff this weakness out like a fly on shit. Once they got the scent, it was all over for him, he was treated like crap by everyone, fell into depression and using violence as a means of protecting himself from ridicule.

At some point, they transitioned to the “cool kids”, where they tried their best to rationalize their behavior. It starts with them pointing out that the smelly kid wore cheap clothes, and he needed to get with the program or continue to be an outcast. They went on to list the brands they were into, Abercrombie & Fitch, The Gap, etc. I don’t know about you, but I look at kids who wear that crap as the outcasts. They have no identity, they are just assimilated into being the same as everyone else.

The most amusing part is the “cool kids” deserved a little ridicule on their own. Most of them were dressed up in some form of various skateboard gear. DC Shoes, Element shirts and hats, you get the picture. While I have a hard time calling Element a true skateboard company anymore, these kids were clearly not skateboarders, and have no right to dress like them. They are phonies, you have to pay your dues to walk the walk of a skateboarder, and none of these kids have, certainly not any of the girls. I would so love for those “cool kids” to be dropped into a San Francisco school and see how well they fare with their current better than everyone attitude.

Now, we are back to the smelly kid, who has resorted to fighting the “cool kids” for making fun of him. It is worth noting, these “cool kids” had no issue admitting they would beat someone up for not fitting in. So the smelly kid does the only thing he knows how to do, which is fight back, protect himself. And it is off to the principals office he goes. Punishment ensues, and there you have it, thats the big huge problem, they are punishing the wrong kid.

If you go to the Humane Society to adopt a dog, and that dog has been abused significantly, he will have turned. That dog will be mean and most likely have to be put down. Not a single person has anything but sympathy for this mean dog, and as a matter of fact, the owners that inflicted abuse on the dog risk jail time for doing so.

So why is it that schools view the same scenario any different? The smelly kid turned mean because he was abused by the “cool kids”. There is no sympathy for him, and as to punishment for the abusers, they won’t even be spoken to. And all the while, events like Columbine go on and no one wants to admit where the real problems are. Columbine happened not because of Marilyn Manson, not because the kids were psychopaths, but because the system failed to protect them.

I do not for a second think that a school counselor is not aware of the hierarchy of cliques that make up a school. If they know and see what is going on, why do they allow it? Allowing the “cool kids” to go around and rule the environment, making their own rules and behaving in a way that can only be considered abusive, does anyone wonder why kids are snapping?

All high school tragedies, I believe, are avoidable, but you need to go to the source of the problem, and that source is not always obvious. Sure, if a kid shows up at school with a AK-47, the immediate source of the problem is the weapon, but after that, the real source of the problem needs to be found. Why did he think his only option was a killing spree? We think we know, we blame bands, parents, mental disorders, medications. When will we look at the months of smaller problems that lead to the breaking event? When will going to a counselor and telling them that the kids picking on you all the time actually become something that gets proper disciplinary attention?

I am sure by now you have guessed, I was not one of the “cool kids”, at the same time, there was none of this “pretend to be a skateboarder” business going on. I was a skateboarder, and with that, I had a group of friends that I hung out with. The “cool kids” knew a hell of a lot better than to fuck with us, even though they were at the top of their social game, my little group could hold it’s own pretty well. So in general, this stuff did not get to close to me, that does not mean I did not see it happening all the time. There were definitely nerds, losers, and lesser liked kids that got the shit end of the stick. There were definitely times I would see guys crying from it.

The worst part, all those “cool kids” are grown up now, and those that I do remember being somewhat crappy to me, I have managed to run into via a high school mailing list. Being much older and wiser, I am confident to call them on their shit. The bitch of it, they either don’t remember, or simply expect to be forgiven because that was so long ago and they are “not that kind of person anymore”. I have been holding grudges for years now, I am not about to stop, but it does show how something that is such a big deal, something with so much potential to spin out of control, has been cast out as a trivial “part of life”. I really wish I had the time to be a school counselor, sitting down with these wanna be skateboarding cool kids would be so much fun.