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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Guide Weather Subscribe Contact Us February 18, 2005 I'll Shut Up - Right After This Dangerous rites of passage John Darling One of the awfullest things you ever hear is someone close to you on the phone saying, "Oh God, oh no, oh my God." It's Friday night. We're at a Valentine party. Those are the words we're listening to. The party stops cold. We wait for her to get off the phone and tell us what the news is. It's going to be horrible, we know that. We all have teens. Please God, don't let it be about them. But it is. Out come the words: Kevan is in the hospital with severe brain damage. A car crash in Medford. Others have been killed. Kevan is a junior at Ashland High. Several of us have kids in that class. We're they in the car? Everyone gets on phones and starts telling everyone else and trying to find details. I call my daughter. She's a friend of Kevan's. Her "hi" is the sweetest word I've ever heard. I tell her what's happened. We soon learn it was just two boys, Kevan and Ian. Twenty minutes later, after more calls around, I have to call her again to tell her Kevan is dead. And so is a man in another car. It's midnight, hard to go to bed. Details emerge that Kevan was going 80 or 100 in downtown Medford. It shocks the gut and stupefies the mind. To do that, one would have to suspend the very survival instinct, let alone any care for the lives of others. It goes against every tenant of order and sanity. Kids gather, talk, weep, hold each other, sleep together, probably will for weeks, months. Parents gather to talk, hour after hour, shaking their heads, trying to find one thread of sense in this, recalling how in every high school it happened - drinking, drugs, driving, daring the devil, death, the horror of death amid youth, the creation of a legend of the kids who will never grow old, who will only be recalled with the goofy, happy faces and personalities of teen years. Like the suicide only weeks earlier of another young, seemingly happy person among us, Joanie McGowan, this tragedy cuts a gash through the community. We're not safe. Anything can happen. To anyone. Again, the questions - was there anything one could have done to stop this? Could I have? The answer is always no. And the debate explodes out into the community - was there alcohol or drugs in this? And did the kids do this tragedy to themselves, by honking, speeding off, baiting cops to chase them, knowing cops will be anguished either way - by ignoring a dangerous, speeding vehicle or being drawn into dangerous pursuit? Most cops don't chase anymore. Too many deaths. Did it happen here? Cops say no. Witnesses say otherwise. Like a big, black raven, blame circles our community, looking for a place to land. How can this happen? Who did this? Cops? Booze? Inattentive parents? Peers knowing the elements of tragedy are present but doing and saying nothing? Lack of meaningful rites of passage beyond the ones - alcohol, cars, speed - that we grown-ups also had? Gradually, the kids talk more. They say how healing the "grief rooms" are at the high school, with candles, pictures of Kevan, other kids to talk to, some of whom they rarely if ever talk to. New bonds form. Kevan, they say, was wild, had a lot of passion and daring, went often outside the envelope. He is eulogized by friends on the school PA system as someone who lived life to the fullest and modeled that for peers. Well, that brings it all up, doesn't it? Teens need ways to live life to the fullest and, if you take away the car keys and the other scary, fun stuff, you take away a big hunk of it. For thousands of years, adolescents have come into adulthood in glory, creating legends that could be told around the fire for generations after - going into that cave with a dagger and short spear to cut down the 12-foot cave bear, stealing horses from neighboring tribes, making love to those with the best genetic material (and fighting for that in dangerous single combat), ingesting the sacred substances of the region, late into the night, in search of the miraculous. Some would die in rites of passage. There has to be risk or there's no glory. The passage into adulthood has to be through the gates where death and life are considered equal worlds. Well, guess what? It's still happening. We adults have tried to arrange rites of passage for teens, with vision quests, long treks, peer camaraderie, immersion in nature, nights alone in the woods. It's great. It works. The more alienated, edgy ones are sent to do it for weeks in the desert. It changes them. Of course, there's no risk, death or even injury. Any risk would bring huge liability - and ruinous lawsuits in the millions. The very risky rite of passage that we do have, of course, is war, left over from the dawn of civilization and now a coed game where large numbers of both genders can enter legend with injury and death. However, these risky rites of combat must have a noble, believable story, some function for the tribe that justifies it and engages the passions of the young people doing it. We've lost that, so this once useful rite now only appeals to the poor and uneducated, who have no other paths to glory and who buy the shabby stories of the last half century. Meanwhile, we parents try to put ourselves in the driver's seat of that Cherokee flying down Riverside at 100 mph, where you have to know your chances of living through the evening are about 10 percent - and you think those are good odds, if you're invincible and you've spent thousands of hours walking away from crashes in video games like Grand Theft Auto. It's the way he would have wanted to go out, says one of his friends. You realize that has to be true. You hear he's not the only kid who has done this road game. You feel afraid, very afraid. You implore your kids and their friends never to get in a car with someone who drives daringly or drinks. They swear they won't. You take a breath. You think you've gotten to them. You add a prayer - you know they won't join the military. Just let them get through high school alive. John Darling is an Ashland writer and counselor. 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