By Count Friedrich Von Olsen

I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I had so many advantages, I can’t remember them all. By the time I was four years old, which is as far back as I can remember, I was a spoiled brat. I might have been a spoiled brat before that, but, as I just said, I can’t remember that far back…
Along about the time I was eight, I have a clear recollection of being taken aside by my father for a rather stern lecture. This occurred during Easter week, somewhere near the midway point of the Spring Hiatus, the two week break we were given from boarding school. It seems that upon arriving back at the manor, I had taken to ordering the domestic staff about.  I have blotted many of the particulars from my memory, although I have a somewhat dim recollection of dressing down the butler, who had had engaged in the unforgivable act of having presented me, during a mid-afternoon refreshment session in the midst of a round of croquet, with a plate of sweet pickles. I let him know, in no uncertain terms, that I expected him to remember that I preferred my gherkins sour and spicy, and the consideration that I had been away at school all those many months was hardly an excuse for his forgetfulness. I remember my father impressing on me that it was somewhat unseemly for someone of my tender years to be speaking to the domestic staff in such harsh tones and with such an air of superiority, especially given that those at whom I was hurling my invective were at least two, and probably more like three or four or even five, decades my senior. My father upbraided me for my imperious bearing, attitude of ascendancy and sense of entitlement, telling me that I had embarrassed him and disgraced our family…
It is interesting what made me summon that to mind. It seems in our High Desert, two of our younger set recently were even more disrespectful to one of their elders than I had been to my own in my youth.  Late in the morning on Sunday January 25, three teenagers boarded a bus on the Victor Valley Transit Authorities route in Victorville. When the driver had the temerity to question the bus pass presented by one of the youths, the juvenile responded by punching the bus driver in the face and, with the assistance of one of his companions, taking the bus driver’s backpack…
When the bus driver, who was at the rather distinct disadvantage of having to maintain control of the bus, pulled over to the side of the road near the intersection of El Evado and Palmdale roads to confront his attacker, the young man and his two cohorts fled…
Authorities were called and sheriff’s deputies were able to round up the trio within a short time. The onboard bus video was reviewed, other passengers on the bus were interviewed, and based on that the deputies concluded one of the three teenagers had not been involved in the mayhem and he was let go. The two others, a seventeen year old and a fifteen year old, however, were arrested and booked into Apple Valley Juvenile Hall, charged with assault and robbery…
I am now left to compare and contrast these indiscretions of youth, the recent ones of these three young men I thankfully do not personally know and my own from some eighty years ago. Mine was a trespass of attitude and hurtful words. Theirs was one of attitude and hurtful action. In the comparison, I am tempted toward the very element of my transgression, a feeling of superiority, a belief that what I did, the insults to my father’s estate’s hired help, was not as bad as the assaults two of these three youths visited upon the public servant in the form of the bus driver…
I fear for our community and the state of our shared humanity. If I, after this long while and the mortification of having disgraced my family, have not been rehabilitated from my bearing of haughty self assertion and feelings of smug superiority, what prospect is there that these young fellows, after embarrassing themselves and disgracing their families and suffering whatever punishment the juvenile judicial procedure has in store for them, will mend their ways and cease beating bus drivers whenever the compulsion to do so grips them?