In Bed, By Ten

Sunday, August 10, 2008

http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/475607

A 16-year-old gunned down outside a Brampton townhouse complex was one of a few dozen "regulars" who hung around the neighborhood recreation center at all hours of the night, locals said yesterday. “*****” was shot to death outside “*****” shortly after 12:30 a.m. yesterday, just steps from the rear wall of the recreation center.

I’m told I’m old-fashioned.

I’m told that times have changed.

They sure have.

When I was sixteen years old, I had to be in bed by ten o’clock.

I spent my high-school days, and nights, lodged in a hostel near Perth, Western Australia. Rules and schedules were both strict and tight. Supper at six. Everyone studied in their assigned places from seven until nine. Light supper until nine-thirty, lights out at ten.

Unless you were in your fourth and fifth (final) year of high school, when you were both encouraged and permitted to continue private study in your personal carrel.

On vacations, at home, I was expected to be home and in my bed by ten o’clock.

And so it is true that I am old-fashioned.

I grew up differently.

I have trouble comprehending a parent who will allow a child to be out at night after ten o’clock. Supervised or not. It was not a part of my childhood experience.

I am deeply saddened by deaths of teenagers. I wish I could re-live my life from the age of fifty, or forty, let alone sixteen.

What changes I would make in my life if given the chance to be sixteen again?

What a future would lie in store for me, were I able to modify some of my decisions?

What a future would lies in store for every sixteen-year old, although, of course, when we are sixteen, very few of us see it that way.

Which is why parents need to make decisions for us.

Decisions such as being at home, in bed, by ten o’clock at night.

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