"He's Just A Kid..."

A 14 year old male is charged with arson, possession of an incendiary device and endangering human life after the Dollarama a couple of blocks from my home went up in flames the other day. The plaza housing this Dollarama was evacuated, surrounding streets were closed to traffic and area residents were told to keep their windows closed against billowing toxic smoke. (That store smelled poisonous as it was, I don't even want to imagine what it smelled like on fire.)

And some people think the 14-year-old should--well, yeah, I guess we have to punish him, but let's not be too harsh here because he didn't know any better.

Excuse me?

"Well, of course he would know fire is bad. But he probably had no idea of how fast the fire would spread".

Oh, okay. So he just wanted to set a little fire, maybe burn just one side of one aisle of the store. All righty, then.

"Healthy, well-adjusted 14-year-olds don't firebomb stores with people inside them."

No excrement, Mr. Holmes.

So  if he's not healthy and well-adjusted, we should adjust the penalty? Time off for abusive mother? Reduced fine due to absentee father?

And here's the thing. Yes, healthy, well-adjusted kids don't behave like this...to this degree. But supposedly healthy, allegedly well-adjusted MALE kids do enjoy destroying things. Destruction is celebrated in this culture for some reason. Watch Mythbusters: they get positively ebullient when they have a chance to blow something up. Hollywood blockbusters all too often involve wrecking buildings, cars, and anything else that might go boom real good. It's sickening...or at least I find it sickening.

Males, incidentally, comprise around ninety percent of arsonists. And eighty percent of drunk drivers, and 92% of serial killers, and 96% of child molesters...are we sensing a trend here?

Testosterone, supposedly. The real San Francisco treat. It seems to me like we can lay most of the world's problems at the feet of testosterone. I, apparently, didn't get much of it.


Meanwhile, we have this 14 year old kid.

Part of me wants to sit down with him, find out his five most favourite things in the world and burn them right in front of him. Part of me wants to fine his parents the full costs of fighting that fire. What I can not accept is this notion that he didn't know what he was doing. Maybe if he was seven. Maybe. Fourteen? He knew. He knew, and just didn't care.