Kids will sometimes act like kids

By Dave Churchill (Contact) | The Daily Journal

Published Friday, November 2, 2007

One early fall day in about 1968, I was walking home from school with my friend, Bruce, when we saw a bigger kid stash something beneath one of the seven trees in our suburban neighborhood larger than a broomstick.

The big kid was one of the school bullies, and normally we third-graders avoided him like the plague. But this time we waited until the coast was clear, and then ambled as casually as possible to the tree in question, dug around a little bit, and found to our amazement a shotgun shell.

Neither of us had ever seen, much less touched, a real shotgun shell. But we knew immediately that it was something that no kid should have… and that it thus had enormous potential for fun. In those days, when television was limited to three channels (we didn’t count Public Television), anything that offered a break from the after school routine of toad-hunting, bike riding and rock fights was welcome.

Even at age 8 it was well known to me, and my friends, that I was born to get away with nothing. Minor infractions that other kids committed with impunity – cutting in lunch line, for example – were unavailable to me because I would always get caught. So it was Bruce who took responsibility for carrying off the shotgun shell. I envied him.

After a few days, when it became clear the bully boy didn’t suspect us (we could tell, because we were unbruised), Bruce and I began hatching plans for our precious shell. Ultimately, we decided to blow it up.

That this idea was extremely dangerous and stupid did not occur to us.

I no longer recall exactly how we planned to put our scheme into action, but I do know it involved matches – because that’s where things went sideways. Dry grass, a brisk breeze and bad judgment combined into quite a little grass fire that, fortunately, was quickly extinguished. The fire station happened to be about three blocks up the road.

As usual, I was quickly and accurately blamed for the deed – in this case because my first-grader brother made it a point to share details with everyone watching the firefighters at work in the vacant field that Bruce and I had chosen for our experiment.

Although Bruce and I were the only property or people hurt – think “extreme spanking” – it was one of my worst childhood experiences. I laugh about it now, but it took many years before it was anything but a horrible, horrible memory.

So it is with some interest that I read this week that one of the recent California fires apparently started from childish play with matches. A 10-year-old boy was apparently testing his match-lighting skills when things got out of hand.

The California fires were a big and very bad deal, with people hurt and made homeless, and untold millions of dollars spent getting the blazes under control.

But while some people are raising questions about whether the 10-year-old should be prosecuted, I can’t help but have some sympathy for the kid. I can well imagine his terror and guilt – and that if he is a normal kid he’ll live with that guilt for a very long time. I can’t imagine that a prosecution would add anything to the resolution he has no doubt made to never again be careless with matches.

I also find it interesting that some have called for the child’s parents to be held responsible for the damage. That is, of course, pointless unless the parents are incredibly wealthy. But it’s also ridiculous because, as any parent can tell you, it’s impossible to keep track of what kids are doing every minute. I can’t think of one thing my own parents could have done to prevent my childhood experiments with fire, short of locking me in my room. And I bet it’s the same in this California case.

In the New York Times account, a University of Southern California psychology professor was quoted as saying, “At least one study suggests that if you take a population of boys between kindergarten and fourth grade, 60 percent of them have committed unsupervised fireplay, which is to say that fireplay is a common and absolutely normal pat of human development.”

For the most part, I’ve always been relatively confident that I am normal. But it’s reassuring to hear that one’s worst transgressions were actually somewhat average. And it’s a lesson I hope people remember when they consider what is to be done about the 10-year-old who burned California.

Kids sometime will act like kids.

Journal publisher Dave Churchill’s column runs on Fridays.