That's why I found myself at Triangle Town Center on Monday morning, tailing two of the species known as Teenagus Americanus.

Black ones, too, because those are the ones in the spotlight now. All who were arrested and whose mug shots were splashed across Triangle TV screens after a mall brawl Saturday night belong to that group.

Rahmaad Midgett of Raleigh and his pal, Eric Pope of Garner, are both 18-year-olds who like hanging out at the mall.

That's where, they said, the similarities between them and the combatants arrested for inciting a riot or assault at the mall end.

"I can't understand why someone would come out here to fight," Midgett said. "I just come to hang out and talk to girls."

Pope, a student at Wake Tech, said, "I just come out here to relax. ... I try to get at least a shirt or a pair of pants every time I come."

Midgett, like one of the suspects arrested and charged Saturday night, was bedecked in what many consider the official gangbanger outfit: oversized white T-shirt, baggy jeans, dreadlocks. He is not, he said -- his soft voice rising for the first time -- in a gang.

In a video clip shown incessantly on television over the weekend, the mother of one of the arrested teens proclaimed her son's innocence. "Every child you see is not in a gang because they got dreadlocks, baggy britches and tattoos," she said.

A woman from Greenville who was shopping Monday with her dreadlocked teenage son agreed when I told her about the woman's comments. "My son ought to be able to wear whatever he wants," she said.

Of course he should, but he and she should be prepared for him to be eyeballed and labeled -- perhaps unfairly -- as someone bearing watching.

Remember the old vaudeville joke?

Patient: Hey doc, it hurts when I do this.

Doc: Don't do that.

That's my advice to the parents I often hear from who feel that their innocent children are being singled out because they look like they just stepped off some gangsta rap album cover: Buy 'em some clothes that fit. And ixnay on the tattoos.

Richard Hudson, vice president and store manager at Triangle Town Center's Hudson Belk, said the melee had no negative impact on his store. "We had a great day yesterday," he said. "We had a double-digit increase over the same day a year ago, and that's saying something, given this economy."

He and employees at other stores said traffic at the mall Monday was impressive, despite it being a traditionally slow period.

Even if, as some people suggest, a curfew is implemented to limit teens' access to the mall, don't think it'll become Utopia.

As I cooled my heels in the mall management office Monday afternoon, waiting for general manager Jack Love to emerge from a meeting and talk to me, a call requesting security at Starbucks came in.

When security was dispatched, I went down expecting to find someone complaining that their latte was not fluffy enough. Instead, I discovered that any curfew seeking to limit human confrontations at the mall would have to be expanded to include middle-aged women and men who apparently bring their domestic disputes to work with them.

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