My Criminology and Penology tutor once asked why we don’t punish children. We students started scratching our heads and, before we all choked to death in a blizzard of dandruff, he gave us the answer: children don’t know right from wrong.
That answer sat uneasily with my own experience as what I remembered of my childhood was dominated by regular updates from my parents about just how naughty I was being. I think kids generally do know what is naughty and what isn’t without too much prompting but what they don’t appreciate is just how serious the consequences of their actions can be.
I might as well confess immediately: I was a juvenile delinquent. I went through a phase which started somewhere after my third birthday and came to an end somewhat after my fourth. Like most criminals I began with some mindless vandalism. My friend Nigel and I were playing in the background when he spotted that the Big Bad Wolf had appeared in Mrs Devis’ garden next door. We crept to the chain link fence and satisfied ourselves that it was him. He seemed to be sniffing the air as yet unaware of our presence. Of course he might have been pretending not to see us. As the stories we heard at Nursery School made perfectly clear, he was a devious creature.
We looked around the garden for the weapons that we knew we would need. There was a pile of half bricks that seemed ideal. With as much stealth as a three year with a half-brick can muster, we crept to the low chain-link fence that divided our garden from Mrs Devis’ and hurled the bricks as hard as we could. They plopped into the Mrs Devis’ beautifully-maintained lawn a few inches beyond the fence. The Big Bad Wolf was unharmed but now roused and vengeful. Panicked, we ran back for more ammunition. Over the course of half an hour or so of staggering and lobbing, the pile of half bricks had clunked and bounced its way onto the lawn next door and the Big Bad Wolf was vanquished. We headed off for tea awarding each other imaginary medals for bravery.
(Portrait of a Serial Killer – that’s me on the right)
An hour later I was confronted by my irate father who had been on the receiving end of a lengthy and vividly worded complaint from our neighbour. He was discinclined to accept that we had acted in self-defence and that Mrs Devis’ garden had, for a short while, been home to child-eating wolf of notorious cunning and terrifying dentition.
Where were our parents whilst we were saving lives with building materials? The answer is that they were sat in each other’s kitchens smoking and talking which is all parents ever seemed to do in those days. Children were put out the door and left to get on with things to an extent that would terrify modern parents and have social services patrolling the suburbs with a big net. Usually we got onto our little bicycles, found a hill with a base thick with nettles and let nature take its course.
One consequence of this enforced community of the tiny is that you had no real choice with whom you played. One child in our street was particularly unwelcome: Jane East. In the first instance Jane was a girl and any little boy knew that that was unforgivable. They were soppy and obsessed with ponies. They tended to break things and tell tales. Jane was not just a girl; she was a noisy, bossy girl. We made a deputation to our parents and asked to be spared any further visits from Jane and received a pithy lecture about the need to get on with each other and not to interrupt the smoking and the gossiping without a very much better reason.
This left us with no choice but to take matters into our own hands. Jane would have to go. My first thought was the red berries on the bush at the front of the house three doors down. They were a bright red and, when crushed, squirted out a dirty yellow paste that we had been warned would lead to instantaneous death if eaten. We offered some to Jane. She looked at them dubiously. It took perhaps 5 minutes of persuasion. She lifted one to her lips and we held our breath. She bit at it and our eyes-widened. Nothing happened. She tried another. Nothing happened. She consumed them by the handful and nothing happened. Foiled.
Then we had another idea. If you put soap in water and stirred it hard, it looked like milk. Or at least it did for a few seconds before it separated like curds and whey. Mum found us gathered around the sink looking guilty. She eyed us supiciously and asked us what we were up to. “Washing our hands, Mum” I said. She knew that couldn’t be true but all the evidence seemed to point in that direction. Four pairs of young eyes gazed back at her. She shook her head, sighed and went back to cigarettes and coffee in the kitchen. I stirred as hard as I could and then ran to Jane whom we had left sat on the front lawn. “Here – drink this” I urged “It’s milk”. Jane may have been as irritating as wire-wool underwear but she was no idiot. She harumphed and went back to smashing toy cars with a rock leaving us standing thwarted and clutching a cup of soapy water.
Then came the call for tea and off we trotted. Fish fingers and beans for everyone and my career as killer was over before it had begun.
Â
Hmm, think you’re so clever Mr Moobs, trying to put us off the scent. We all know you have a couple of bodies hidden in your garden. Don’t think your mild mannered countenance can hide the evil that lurks within…
The world shall hear from me again. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Fish fingers and beans? The root of all evil, I hear.
What’s with those darling overalls? I hear they’re the preferred child-wear of the early sociopaths… hmmmm
Funnily enough, my arch-nemesis when I was very small was also called Jane. Terribly originally, my brother and I nicknamed her Jane the Pain and would roll our eyes and groan dramatically whenever her mother came round to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes with our mother. We never thought about trying to poison her Vimto though. Missed a trick there.
Brilliant post – I wonder where Jane East is now? Excellent photo, too.
Why is it always the cute ones who turn out to be so naughty?
Is the photo from your police file? The authoritarian sergeant holding the little terror still for his cataloging along with all the other enemies of decent society.
That brings back a LOT of memories.
My mom grew up (till 8) in the wilds of Vancouver where there was much bush and underbrush to disapear in for hours. For such a quiet adult, she was apparently the ring leader of a bold gang of miscreants.
I was a kid in the swinging 70’s and our ‘burbs were filled with coffee drinking, martini swilling and chain smoking bored housewives…..Desparate Housewives had NOTHING on these ladies.
They all took turns pretending to know where we were during the day. We were mostly down almost drowning in a nearby stream or roaming the grounds of the insane asylum next door.
And yeah…the play with that kid or else just because I drink coffee with his mom bull!?? What the hell was that!
For years I was told I was BEST FRIENDS with Alan. Alan and I hated each others guts. They finally figured this out when they found us in the garage…me on my knees….him with fistfulls of my hair in his grubby little hands.
You were such a noble kid. Trying to save the neighborhood from a wolf. Trying to kill off the bossy kid. Amazing.
We were mostly mashing over ripe fruit at each other in monsterous all neighborhood orange wars. Californians, you know were a bit odd. That’s of course before the ‘hippies’ turned us on the drugs….
and the Clash…
Don’t worry. It takes a very special sort of person to live up to teh serial killer moniker…
Thre are only a chosen few. 😉
Steve~
“Here, drink this. It’s milk.” Hehehe!!
I love it when posts include the line: “I might as well confess immediately: I was a juvenile delinquent.”
Very cute.
“sat in each other’s kitchens smoking and talking which is all parents ever seemed to do in those days. Children were put out the door and left to get on with things”
I still subscibe to this theory…only replace “smoking” with “drinking”.
I guess I am raising serial killers… look out small animals.
We’ll still love you even if you must write from prison soon. 😉
Serial killing is so 1990’s. You need to update.
Great story. My mom used to kick us outdoors while she smoked ciggies and read Harlequin romances so I can relate.
I think the reason we don’t punish childred the same as adults is that even though a child may do something she or he knows is wrong, the child or young teenager cannot underdstand the long term consequences of actions.
Kids don’t understand dead is forever. Sounds harsh but it is true.
I love it – trying to poison her with soapy water …
Remember when Mums used to put the children outside in their prams in all weathers to ‘get some air’? One of my sisters, bundled up against the cold (so okay really) used to amuse herself by dismantling her pram (she must have been pretty small as she was still far too young to walk). She’d start with the pillow, then toys, blankets, mattress – and finally the baseboard. Sometimes the neighbours would spot this before Mum. “She’s done it again, Mrs PogMa!!”, they’d shout. Mum would dash out to find PogSis dangling by the straps that stopped her hurtling over the side, in frame of her pram, using beaming delightedly, she said. When she wasn’t half-strangling herself, that is.
She has, remarkably, survived to have kids of her own.
Um – ‘usually’ beaming delightedly. Ahem.
Note to self………..
Fish Fingers and Beans… The root of all evil…
you look a thoroughly bad naughty boy! so glad you turned into the fine figure of a man and upstanding citizen of blogrovia we’ve come to love and admire. maybe it’s down to the beans and fishfingers? there’s hope for my kids yet.
can i just say, if i met someone who said they were a penology tutor, i’d look at them funny – at the very least – and maybe edge away… just a little.
I think we should punish are kids. But also be able to recognise at what age they can understand the concept or ‘if you kick me again you’re going to sit on the naughty stair’. etc.
Parents must be taught how to make their kids understand what is right or wrong without teaching them to be violent.
My childhood was fun depire my parents teaching me how to behave properly and what is wrong.
I was waiting for that story to end with, “…and twenty years later I ran into Jane (not her real name) working at a demolition yard. She had matured into a fine young lady, and I was filled with remorse for trying to kill her. We got married five days later.”
I would pay good money to catch a glimpse of the young Moobs in action.
By the way, we had those same EAT-THEM-AND-YOU-WILL-DIE berries in our neighborhood. What’s the deal?!
You may joke about fish fingers, but I knew a church minister once who was convinced fish fingers were an ‘abomination’ (yes, seriously), because…. ‘fish do not have fingers’. But as a Catholic, Moobs, you were probably already damned in his eyes – the fish fingers were but the tip of the iceberg.
Everyone had eat-them-and-you-will-die berries as a child. I think they were really eat-them-and-you-will-be-quite-ill-with-a-stomach-upset berries, which doesn’t have the same kind of ring to it, does it??
The thing about the UK is we don’t have much that’s dramatically poisonous in our natural world.
As for M’s point – I think kids then used to know that death was a horrible thing that we didn’t want anyone to suffer horribly. We knew somehow that you couldn’t come back if you were dead. Kids now aren’t so sure because they learn how to play shoot-em-up computergames from nursery school age. You always get more than one life on those things.
I have these same fears for my own juvenile delinquent. He has recenty turned three and already well into his life of crime. I fear he may not ever stop as his ridiculously stubborn nature impedes his listening to anything I have to say. Just for the record, he likes both fish AND beans! Very creative post!
Heather – a pattern is emerging.