Christopher Michael Mauney: Teens can be rebellious

In response to the Jan. 11 letter “Kids need respect for authority”: I distinctly remember coming out of Bible class at Cardinal Gibbons High School and locking gaze with some fellow I had quarrel with.

The resulting engagement was as kinetic as it was awkward. The whole experience felt like a vaguely rebellious ritual, akin to smoking in the restroom or skipping class. As it happens, I did those things also and worse under the auspices of the good Franciscans at CGHS.

These are unwholesome activities and worth discouraging. But such behavior rarely attains the status of crime.

Misbehavior is expected and in some ways even encouraged in the young, overdosed as they are on their own hormones.

It is quite unpleasant in general to hear residents endorse violent reprisal from civil authorities, but to do so in response to mundane pubescent angst is quite wicked.

“Not harmless little kids,” the letter writer said. Few teenagers are as harmless as he supposed. But of course he knows this, young man he no doubt once was.

His concern is not with out-of-control teenagers; in his letter, with considerable clarity, his issue is with “those” out-of-control teenagers.

This story was originally published January 16, 2017 at 6:22 PM with the headline "Christopher Michael Mauney: Teens can be rebellious."