Miscreants in the suburbs, bar brawls and cab chaos in the city. This recent surge of odious behaviour and disregard for law and order has us going to hell in a hand basket. Is this behaviour increasing or just increasingly being highlighted? Are young people losing respect or don’t have respect in the first place? Or has it got something to do with the way kids are introduced to authority?
I remember a warm April Saturday, my sister’s 16th birthday party. My best friend and I were 10 at the time and barricaded inside our TV room by a 3 foot pile of 10 year old knitting magazines. Tina, a freckle covered strawberry blonde, had bravely managed to whisk a goon of cheap wine away from the teens in a rare moment of distraction. We had taken it hostage. Our terms were simple. $5 of mixed lollies – no liquorice allsorts – delivered in an unmarked brown paper bag at 2.12pm.
Our terms were met. But we were mini vigilantes, our very own “A-Team”, and what they didn’t realise was that we’d executed the mission, not driven by sweets (you’ve got to try these things!) but our genuine concern for the law. You can’t imagine the teenage fury that erupted when they found out we’d already poured the offending substance down the laundry sink. Oh yes! A-Team 1 – Lawbreakers nil!
This strong idea of social justice was a direct result of school visits by the men in blue throughout our primary years. Sergeant plod would come every couple of months with one or two fresh faced rookies dressed in their crisp uniforms complete with guns. Fielding obligatory questions about how many bad guys they’d shot, they’d impress upon our young minds the importance of “Stranger Danger” and “Household Hazards”. This followed up a few months later with a lively lesson in the playground on “Road Safety” featuring battered cardboard box cars and a visit from the lollypop lady.
To add to our expanding knowledge of safety, law and order were visits from handsome Firemen (theirs was my favourite uniform….still is!). With the help good ol’ corporate cross promotion, I still find myself reciting their little ditty whenever I see “Grimace” and “The Hamburgler”. I just know one day I’m going to be stuck in a smoke filled fast food restaurant with deep fryers ablaze, confidently leading fellow customers to safety with my keen pre-prepared observation of the nearest fire exit, crawling on all fours and yelling “Get down low and GO, GO, GO”.
The point is, would kids be so hell-bent to test the patience of these fine upstanding men and women if in fact they themselves had a fundamental respect for them just as we had when we were young. Okay, things were a little different then. Our officers of the law had a bit more room to move. Police had the time to humour parents who dragged their kids up to the cop shop to show them where they’d end up if they kept smoking stogies under the house. I still shudder when I think of that grim concrete 3 by 2 metre cell. The door was slammed shut (for added effect) as I sat on the small rock hard bed looking intensely at the cold metal dunny thinking “there’s no way on God’s green earth I can sit on that thing without a toilet seat!”. My sister, the real offender clearly beyond redemption, stood outside the bars, pulled faces and pretended to blow love hearts at me from her imaginary cigarette.
Perhaps it’s our relationship with these authority figures when we’re young and impressionable that increases the odds of us becoming law abiding citizens. With things going pear shaped so quickly, I’m beginning to wonder if the Government has pulled funding on these programs in favour of handing each child a laptop with free broadband access. I just can’t see “Sergeant Willy’s Safety Education” Facebook page being all that popular. Bring back the good old days of toe tapping tunes, catch phrases and carefully integrated intimidation tactics and all will be right with the world.
