These Kids Today

I hate to admit this, but as I get older, I find myself becoming an old fogy.  My patience for ignorance is low. The music always seems too loud and angry.  I hear the words, “when I was their age…” flying out of my mouth, and then it is usually followed by something embarrassingly lame.  I even get incensed when I am forced to slow my gait, because there is some teenager with his pants hanging so low, that he has to walk like a penguin.  Don’t try climbing stairs behind them.  It is beyond hilarious and time consuming. I always feel like the criminal on the Scooby Doo cartoons, who refers to the gang of young sleuths as “those darn, meddling kids”.   Some days, I just want to yell “ Get outta my yard”  for no good reason.  Suffice it to say, this whole thing will really seem completely biased the more you keep reading.  

I was on the elliptical one early morning watching the news.  As I huffed and puffed, there was this insane story about a young black girl in Texas, Jakadrien, who ran away from home in November 2010, and  through some insane circumstances, found herself deported to Columbia in April 2011. She was devastated by the death of her grandfather and the impending divorce of her parents.  As a result, she felt compelled to run away. Now the story said that somehow, she fled her home in Dallas and ended up in Houston, where she was arrested for theft.  When asked her name, she lied and gave a fake one.  Well, that fake one belonged to a Columbian immigrant with warrants for her arrest.  It’s insane, right?

Houston Police Department and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were not playing, nor were they actually paying attention to any obvious details. ICE said it tried to verify her identity through fingerprints and database searches, and nothing raised a red flag.  I wonder if an actual match of prints to the person with the warrants, is a red flag?  Oh well, since they didn't confirm her identity, they deported her to Colombia anyway, where that government gave her a work card and released her. My favorite quote in one of the articles is

“There are still many unanswered questions about how an African-American girl who speaks no Spanish is mistaken for a foreign national.”

 I bet there are.  It is so heinous it went that far. In a follow up story, Colombia issued its own statement saying:

"She told the U.S. Magistrate she was a Colombian citizen of age. The Colombian consulate in Houston expedited a temporary passport to her. Once she arrived we initiated a search for her family. In the meantime, we did a psychological evaluation, then put her to work in a call center."  

Now I can pontificate about how racist and unjust all of this seems, or I can talk about how this country and its issues with immigration need to be seriously checked, or I could probably skate by with a thin argument focusing on how this almost feels like some sort of twisted, government-sanctioned human trafficking.  Luckily for you, I won’t be doing any of that.   Besides, my shady nature cannot resist a different look at this situation. Something is not right.

Of course, there is a great news moment where we see the grandmother, just pleading for her little grand baby to finally come home.  There is another news moment of the mother, who is also worried about her “good” little girl, and an even better the Dallas police officer, who cannot believe that young Jakadrien ended up so far away.   It is all so sad and touching, but this is where I get shady, because one must ask the question:  How really bad is it where you are living, young lady,  with a “seemingly loving and supporting” family, that you not only run away from,  but get arrested for theft in another city,  and lie about who you are when busted,  and sit through a FULL BLOWN deportation trial, much less board a plane for a country where you do not know the language,  that you REFUSE to call home? As these things were happening to her, did she just forget how to use a phone? I find that hard to believe, because have you seen these kids and their text messaging skills alone?  Now as an actor and a lover of improvisation, I must admire her commitment to character, but even the best of scenes has to end.  

I am not heartless, because I do understand some of the elements of grief, and I have seen all of the studies about the emotional havoc that divorce can wreak on an adolescent. When I was her age, I, too, was raised with a reasonable amount of fear of my parents, but DAMN GIRL! At some point, like in the open courtroom of a deportation trial, did it not occur to ask if ANYONE could call her mother, and maybe have her prove that you are an American?  I am just asking.   I really did not want to walk down the “blame the victim” path, but if you have ever been on a train, bus, or even in the mall with a gaggle of teenagers, the thing we can all agree upon is they know how to be heard.  If you take a closer look at the cell phone pictures, Ms Jakadrien looks like she might be a little fast, as my mother used to say. So if that family dynamic IS problematic, then where was the church and school’s involvement?  

 I heard her grandmother talk about her prayers to God, so I can imagine there is a black Baptist church somewhere in Dallas, holding round the clock prayer circles.  I remember my high school Government teacher, Mr. Cleary, took all of his seniors on a field trip to the Galveston County jail.  It was his attempt to keep us from making bad choices as we enter adulthood.  I even remember my father sitting down with me and both of us watching Scared Straight.  During the commercial breaks, he would tell me his errant tales of being a delinquent, and the lessons he learned.  Between Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, regular church services, special church trip services, prayer meeting, Baptist Training Union,  et. al. , I remember being taught the differences between right and wrong.  As my old Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Gates used to say, “hard ears make a soft behind. “ I don’t remember the “and it can get you deported” part, but it was a different time. 

Now this story does have a happy ending.  Ms. Jakadrien has since been reunited with her ever so grateful family.  I will say that she is so lucky that she did not have to grow up under Ethel Price’s thumb, because when that plane arrived from Columbia, with her little baby on it, they would have needed the entire TSA staff to keep my mother from whooping that ass!   

But as I look at her face upon her return to her loving family, I see one of two things.  She may really be someone in need of psychiatric counseling, or she just left for a real reason that we will not find out until Oprah does the exclusive interview.  In either case, please note that I have not even said ANYTHING about her name.  Just like I mentioned earlier, I am an old fogy.