horrible things when done by younger people are even more disconcerting

I started thinking of this last week when the cover of the New York Times was a grinning Lynndie England both at home in West Virgina as well as standing over a naked Iraqi man, holding a leash around his neck in Abu Ghraib. Not only is she now infamous having been photographed in horrific and masochistic action, but she is possibly pregnant and, perhaps most jarringly- was born in 1982. The nineteen-year-old man in Minnesota who heard voices telling him to kill his mom , he shot her and then only did not turn the gun on himself because he knew his mother would be mad if he shot himself.
I don’t know why I find it so disturbing when people younger than me do bad things, because its not as if these people are children, either. Maybe a similar thing to being in gas station and seeing the sign that says, “you must have been born after this date in 1986 to buy cigarettes.” And you can’t imagine that those born in 1986 are eighteen.


this wasn't what I meant.


Maybe its because I feel young these days, because my birthday is coming and I am for maybe the first time very ready to be a year older. Or maybe its because there is this eternal hope that each generation is going to set the world on fire- but we don't know how and when and so when we see evidence of kids coming up behind, already ruining the plan, it all seems more hopeless.