A bunch of kids went nuts at Mayfair Mall on Sunday night.  Scared people.  Knocked things over.  Created a lot of hubbub – which is my favorite word for a really loud, messy, situation. So, ok, what’s next will be Mayfair deciding that no one under 25 can enter the mall without a double escort. Groups of more than three kids will be tossed out of the mall.  And there will be worried, worried eyes cast on any gathering – large or small – of African American teens.  Broad brush, this is going to be.

I’m telling you that the real Mayfair Madness isn’t what happened there on Sunday night – although the little rampage/wreckage/intimidation was totally out of line, disgusting, and unacceptable (why has that word become our favorite way of saying that something is BAD to do?).

The real Madness is yet to come.  This is when the Red Rover teams choose up sides.  On the one side will be the folks that shake their heads, tsking, “Those kids don’t know how to act.”  On the other side, the sad, understanding folks, “Oh, those poor kids don’t have anything to do in this town.”

Heaven forbid someone calls me to facilitate a planning session on how to deal with kids not having anything to do so they have to act like idiots at the mall.  Here’s the deal on this one:  Kids act like idiots a lot of the time.  When there are a lot of them together in a mood to act like idiots, a well-proven mechanism  called mob psychology takes over.  This is the same group-think that has resulted in all manner of mayhem and tragedy – people in a group will do things they would never do on their own. 

Pick apart the Mayfair One Hundred – or however many they end up being – and you’ll find a bunch of A students, a couple of athletes, a few kids who spent the afternoon in church, a couple of delinquents, and a whole bunch of kids who thought running through stores was more interesting than eating their 12th Cinn-A-Bon in the food court.

My view:  Relax, everybody.  Kids freaked out.  It’s not the end of the world.  It’s not enough the end of Mayfair.  Or shopping as we know it.   It’s just kids acting nuts.  Do we love it?  No.  But do we need to start planning on how to solve this terrible problem?  Do we need a day long retreat on recreational alternatives for youth? 

No.  We need to roll our eyes and get a grip.

There’s a big risk I will start sounding like Lewis Black in this post.  I have had it up to here with ho-hum service providers who haven’t felt a sense of urgency since the last time they stood in a slow fast food lane.

It’s one thing when the waiting customers are adults.  Another matter altogether when we’re talking about children.  Because children – you see – live in a different time dimension, sort of like dogs.  Every hour is a day, every day is a month – waiting ticks away on a bigger clock for kids.  At the same time kids’ brains are developing at warp speed and their emotions are careening around street lights and space shuttles, adults are yawning their way through the 3 hour process necessary to schedule the next meeting in six months.

And kids?  They don’t really complain about it.  They don’t know too much about consumer hotlines and ombudsman programs.  They show up where the adults take them.  And use the only tools they have to make themselves heard including silence, ‘acting out’, and taking off, if they’re older.  They don’t know what they need and they don’t get it about taking a number.  They are told to rely on adults to figure it out but the adults have a lot of other pressing matters like referral forms and reports and collaborative team meetings.

The cynical part of me thinks that this dull, uninspired, limp culture is part and parcel of the for-profit helping industry whose interests are better served by kids staying a mess rather than getting healthy.  Maybe I’m wrong — everyone’s really super committed but it’s just hard to move quickly and affirmatively.  Sure.

Maybe it’ll all work out.  I just have to be patient.