Where the Lines Are
Foreword
Doctor Benjamin Spock’s book, The Common Sense Book of Child and Baby Care, was first published in 1946. One of its principal tenets is that children crave the knowledge of their limitations. Some parents learn that more quickly than others. Some parents never learn it at all. And sometimes children come to learn it, to the astonishment of their parents.
And So it Begins …
The older of my two sons, Sean, was born 37 years after the publication of Dr. Spock’s book — on October 6, 1983, to be precise. Sixteen years later, he was acting out his adolescent irrationality in myriad ways that included taking his mother’s car without her permission, without a driver’s license, and frequently without her knowledge. (If you think the fact that he took his mother’s car at other times without a license and with his mother’s knowledge is even more alarming, trust your instincts.) Sean’s mother and I were divorced by then. Because we shared custody of our two sons, she made me aware of what Sean was doing.
During one of Sean’s every-other-weekend stays with me, I told him I was afraid. He asked why. More precisely, he said, “What the hell are you scared about?” I explained my fear of the possibility that his behavior could land him in the the proverbial system, in a set of circumstances over which neither of us would have any control. He appeared to listen. He didn’t hear.
On Friday, December 31, 1999, New Years Eve, Sean, still sans driver’s license, attended a party in the neighborhood in West Hartford, Connecticut, in which he lived with his mother. He and a friend (we’ll call him Jack), who was not yet 16, decided to leave the party early. Both of them were aware that another friend, a boy Sean had grown up with (we’ll call him Junior) had gone away with his family for the weekend. Sean knew how to get into their home through a window they always left unlocked. He knew where Junior’s father, an attorney (we’ll call him Senior), kept his car keys. He knew the combination to the lock on the garage. He knew how to drive. He didn’t know enough not to use any of that knowledge.
Sean and Jack took Senior’s car, a Volvo sedan, and went for a ride. They cruised around, picked up Jack’s girlfriend, impressed a few of their buddies, convinced themselves they were somewhere on the Adolescent Judgment Scale between Cool and Invincible, and, sometime in the wee hours of Saturday, put the car back, locked the garage, and put the keys back.
Ramp Up the Stupid
Quickly sliding up the Scale to Slick, they deduced, of course, that if they could get away with something once, they could get away with that same something again. Armed with that delusion, they went back to the same family’s home again Saturday night. Sean went in again, took Senior’s car keys again, unlocked the garage again, and took Senior’s car again.
What Sean and Jack couldn’t know was that, during his family’s weekend getaway, Senior remembered he had an obligation to fulfill on Sunday, requiring his return on Saturday night. When Sean and Jack drove into the neighborhood to return Senior’s car, they were horrified to find the family van in the driveway, all the lights in the house on — including the floodlights that illuminated the driveway — and the family busily unloading the van.
Their addled adolescent minds notwithstanding, Sean and Jack had presence of mind enough to panic. They drove past the house and escaped notice, even as they feverishly plotted Plan B, which they ended up with no time to formulate: Shortly after getting into the house, Senior noticed the keys to his Volvo were missing. He noticed the Volvo was missing. He called the phone that was in the car. When it rang, Sean and Jack went from panicked to freaked.
Heading north out of the neighborhood, they reached Albany Avenue. Heading east on Albany Avenue, they crossed the city line into Hartford and, more specifically, into the city’s notorious and very dangerous North End. Sean then hung a quick left on Mark Twain Drive and veered right into a housing project on Dillon Road. He and Jack bailed out of the car. Sean tossed the keys into a dumpster, and both of them managed to hoof it out of the projects and the North End without becoming body-count statistics.
The Call
In January of 2000, I was working at a small public-relations agency in Avon, Connecticut. One night during the middle of the month, I was in my office much later than I should have been. The phone on my desk rang. It was Senior. The call went like this:
Senior: Hi, Mark. It’s Senior.
Me: Hi! How are you? Happy New Year.
Senior: Can you meet me at the Hartford Police Station?
Me: Sure. When?
Senior: Now. I’m here with Sean and Jack.
Me: What happened?
Senior: Just get here.
When I arrived at HPD, Senior looked to be some combination of peeved and crestfallen. The desk sergeant looked to be some combination of bored and curious. Sean and Jack looked to be some combination of mildly concerned and adolescently defiant. Jack’s father looked to be some combination of aloof and inconvenienced. The two patrolmen who stood next to the boys looked to be some combination of inured and impatient. I was some combination of angry, disappointed, and terrified.
Senior said to Jack’s father and me, “The boys will get into a cruiser with the officers. They’ll give the officers directions to where they left my car. I’ll drive behind them. You’ll drive behind me.” There was no hesitation in Senior’s voice, no equivocation, no nervous edge. It was certain, authoritative, and direct. It neither invited nor permitted questioning. The desk sergeant and the patrolmen said nothing. Neither did anyone else.
Four cars drove slowly through the dark in a cold January rain, made colder by the dank chill of the procession’s mission — north on High Street, west on Albany Avenue, north on Mark Twain Drive, east on Dillon Road. The Volvo sat where Sean and Jack had left it, seemingly untouched. Senior, with a second set of keys, opened the driver’s side door. The phone was still there. He opened the trunk. His late father’s golf clubs were still there. He breathed a sigh of relief none of the rest of us felt at all.
The Machine
On the way home that night, I was crying. “Why the hell are YOU crying,” Sean asked like the teenager he was. I said, “Remember the conversation in which I told you I was afraid we’d come to a point at which we were in the system and at its mercy? We’re there. We have no control. We have no way of predicting what will happen. We have no idea of the prices to be paid. All we can do now is wait.”
Sean said, “All I did was borrow a car.”
“That’s your perspective. From the perspective of the law, you’re guilty of driving without a license. That’s a misdemeanor. You’re also guilty of breaking and entering, plus grand theft auto. Those are felonies. And the only difference between you and Vince [a friend of Sean who was doing time for his own felony conviction] is whatever you think of yourself because Vince, obviously, thinks nothing of himself.”
The next day, Senior called me. He explained how he’d learned what happened to his car, who did it, and where it was. He told me Jack’s girlfriend, miffed over some perceived slight, had called to tell him the story, two weeks after the fact. He told me he believed Sean needed to be taught a lesson. I told him he was right, and I was ready to face the music with him.
Because Senior’s an attorney, he knew there were two jurisdictions involved — West Hartford, whence his car had been stolen, and Hartford, the jurisdiction in which it had been recovered. He told me he was going to press charges in West Hartford, but not in Hartford, since Sean’s time in the system would be considerably more brutal in Hartford, at least in part because of the fact that he might be detained in the infamous Morgan Street lock-up. I thanked Senior for that consideration.
I took Sean to his appointment to be booked on his charges at the West Hartford Police Department. When we arrived, the desk sergeant signed us in, pointed toward a waiting area, and told us to have a seat.
After giving us a few carefully calculated minutes to stew in anxious anticipation, the booking officer came in. “Sean O’Brien!” We both stood up. The officer pointed at me and said, “Not you.” I sat down. The officer led Sean away.
When Sean returned, the ink stains still on his fingertips from having his prints taken, he was green. I asked him what was wrong. He told me the officer had taken him through the lock-up on the way to the booking room. I asked Sean, “What got to you, the stuff you saw in there?” He said, “No … the smell.” I said a silent prayer of gratitude for the booking officer’s savvy.
I retained a defense attorney. I scheduled appointments for Sean and me to attend counseling sessions with a family therapist. I went with Sean to meet with the vice-principal at Northwest Catholic High School Sean attended, for which he played basketball, and from which he’d be suspended for two weeks while the administration decided whether to expel him permanently. Subsequent to that, I took Sean to every one of his court dates.
The Turning Tide
Lest you fear a disastrous ending to this story, fear not: The result of all the ensuing proceedings is that four things saved Sean: First, Senior wrote a letter to the judge who presided over Sean’s case. In the letter, which the judge read aloud in court, Senior said he’d known Sean his whole life. He believed him to be a good kid who’d made a bad decision. And he asked the judge for leniency.
Second, Sean was granted first-offender status and was deemed qualified for Accelerated Rehabilitation, the one and only get-out-of-jail-free card to which one is entitled from the State of Connecticut. The two-year-jail term to which Sean otherwise would have been sentenced was suspended. He was given 100 hours of community service.
Third, Sean elected to do his community service at a Salvation Army soup kitchen in downtown Hartford. He could have chosen to sit on his ass in the West Hartford Public Library for 100 hours. He didn’t. He opted to see what reality is like if you’ve drawn fewer advantages from the deck of life than he did.
Fourth, Sean found the sense of himself that his friend, Vince, lacked. He recognized and was grateful for all of the people who’d stood by him and all of the institutions that were willing to believe in him and forgive him. He recognized and was grateful for all of the things in his life that the lives of so many others don’t and never will have. He may not have come to believe he deserved any of that faith and good fortune just then. But he did understand he had responsibility to continue to earn and uphold it.
The Closed Circle
Twenty years have passed. Sean turned 36 in October of 2019. He’s a good man; a good husband to his wife, Lauren, whose gentle, thoughtful nature he respects and admires; a good father to two children, Evan and Maia; a dedicated employee; and a born basketball coach. He has a keenly developed and hard-earned sense of right and wrong. And he’s less quick to question or judge me when I cry, especially when I cry for joy at the man he’s become.
When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. (Mark Twain)
Some years after the incident, I was sitting with Sean, in all likelihood watching a basketball game. I don’t know why that New Year’s Eve and its ensuing travails crossed my mind. But they did. I said, “Remember the incident with Senior’s car?”
“Of course, I do.”
“I don’t even know if there’s an answer to this question. But what the hell, if anything, were you thinking.”
Sean said, without a second’s hesitation, “I needed to know where the lines were.”
Sean didn’t then and doesn’t now know the first thing about Dr. Spock and his book. But he knew he needed to know his limitations. He needed to know where the lines are. God bless him for knowing.
We all need to know where the lines are.
