Hiding Out In Hawaii

Aloha! I am hiding out this week on the Hawaiian Island of Kauai with my friend Jeanne, whom I’ve known since the eighth grade. We are belatedly celebrating our December birthdays. We are not sharing which birthday – but it was a biggie, and we decided it merited something special. We are staying in Jeanne’s oceanfront condo and wake every morning to the sound of the waves.

This is a most astonishing place, wild and ferocious. It is an island mostly undeveloped, with ragged mountain tops and deep valleys, verdant rain forests and wide swaths of pasture where cattle graze under a cerulean sun. Feral chickens wander about and sometimes peck at our patio door.

My mother Bonnie has come along to chaperone. Now it might seem that women our age would not require looking after, and I suppose that’s true. We’ve spent the first few days on this luscious island swimming and hiking, shopping and snorkeling. We’ve been drinking Dom Perignon at night because there is a Costco on this island and Jeanne has a credit card. 

But there was a time when Jeanne and I had a rather, um, extensive criminal history. It is our past that keeps us close these days. We know each other's secrets.

Jeanne and I were what my grandmother used to call “late bloomers.” As teenagers, we were skinny and knock kneed. We wore glasses and got good grades. We had wild, wavy hair that would greatly expand in the humidity of Southern California summers. On some days, we looked liked human Q tips.

We couldn’t get dates. Homecoming dances came and went. The popular girls went steady and we stayed home. We wrapped our frizzy hair around empty orange juice cans each night, slathered Noxema on our faces and prayed. The phone never rang.

In an effort to fend off Geekyness, we aspired to be Bad Girls.  In high school, we were often Minors In Possession, pooling our baby sitting money for bottles of screw top wine. We smoked like fiends. We never met a speed limit we wouldn’t break, a stop sign we wouldn’t run.

Eventually, we stole a car.

This major felony began with a boy, of course. It was our senior year. With prom looming over us, our GET A BOYFRIEND campaign was in full swing, and by Christmas we’d both landed a couple of misfits, just like ourselves.

Eric was mine, a sweet boy, with Irish skin so porcelain that after a few minutes in the sun he would turn a rosy shade, prompting the meaner kids in the school to nickname him “Pinky.”

Jeanne had snagged a tall lanky kid named Anthony, who was all nose and ears. This kid’s nose was so large that he would be just as tall if he were lying on his back.

The prom came and went, a blur of rented tuxedos and Chicken Kiev. We drove out to Santa Monica afterward and made out by the pier. A few months later, we all graduated. Then the question for Jeanne and me became this – what to do with these two? We no longer needed prom dates. We weren’t particularly attached to these goombas. But we also didn’t want to be back in that dreaded no man’s land of No Man.

Anthony solved the question for Jeanne. We got wind that he was seeing another girl.

Jeanne and I began spying on him. It seemed the only thing to do. I was driving a 1966 Dodge Dart. One afternoon, we watched Anthony pull his car to the curb in front of this girl’s house. She came running out, and embraced him.

Jeanne and I turned to look at each other, horrified. Here’s the thing about Bad Girls. We don’t like to be punked. We like to think we’re the ones calling the shots.  It wasn’t just the fact the Anthony was cheating on Jeanne, it was the notion that she never got the chance to tell him so long, see you later. When you’re young and awkward and geeky, these things count.

Jeanne had a key to his car because she sometimes took it to wash while he worked as a box boy at the local grocery store. After the girl and Anthony went inside, Jeanne and I hopped into Anthony’s Cougar and drove off. Grand Theft Auto proved to be exhilarating. We drove around the block, our hearts pounding.

But how to top this? We drove to my house and I rummaged in my mother’s closet for a blouse. Something large. Jeanne was morose. “How could he,” she moaned. The only thing more exciting about having a boyfriend is having one who cheats on you.

“Here,” I said, handing her a blouse. “Try this on.” It was extra large. I grabbed pillows off my mother’s bed. “Tuck these under your shirt. You’re about to become an expectant mother.”

I look back now, over the decades, and wonder about us, how reckless we were, how willing we were to rampage about, wreaking havoc. How darn much fun we had.

We drove back to the girl’s house. We parked Anthony's car in a different spot. Jeanne, looking ten months pregnant, waddled up to the door and pounded on it. Anthony answered the door. So did the girl. And so, eventually did her parents.


"Jeanne, please," Anthony moaned. Her parents were gape mouthed. The girls eye's were wide with astonishment, then horror.

"Are you going to come home and take care of this baby," Jeanne demanded with just the right hint of hysteria in her voice. "Are you abandoning your family?"


Anthony turned to the parents. "I barely know this girl," he said, jerking his head in Jeanne's direction.

"Not so!" Jeanne shrieked. She waved his car keys at him. "I've been out driving your car! Look, now it's parked across the street. If you're not the father of this baby, why do I have your keys?"

The girl and her parents all turned to look at Anthony in an apprasing way.

"Give me those damn keys," he scowled. Jeanne tossed them to me, and I threw them over the roof of the garage. Then we stomped off, leaving them all in the doorway.

When we got back into the Dodge Dart, we laughed until our faces hurt. Anthony never called again, and we didn't much care.

That summer marked the end of our crime spree though. Soon we were too busy in college and our careers. Then we married men we love and raised families. No time to steal or terrorize.

So now I sit on this lovely island with my good friend and we look back over the years, and toast to the fine lives we've had.  We are comfortable in our own skins, we can laugh at our mistakes and rejoice at our successes.

We don't have to stake our our men. They come home to us every night.

Not too bad for a couple of skinny girls with orange juice cans in their hair.

 l   

Babies Behind Bars

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Dontez Tillman, one of Michigan's young lifers, was 14 when charged as an adult with murder. Convicted at age 15, he is currently serving a life sentence in an adult prison. 







I sat in a courtroom this past week, and watched yet another child, this kid's face still round with baby fat, go away to prison as an adult.

It is Michigan's ugly little secret. We are second in the world in the number of juveniles we sentence as adults. There are currently more than 350 kids, some as young as 14, serving life sentences in this state. We're topped only by Pennsylvania, with 444.

Barbaric? Consider this. Totalitarian governments - Syria and North Korea, for starters -  do not treat children as adults in their justice systems.  Colorado and Texas flat out ban sending kids to prison for life. (Texas? Yes, you read that right. Texas! That bastion of compassion!)

Leonard White was 15 years old, and at 5'1'', small for his age, a special education student struggling to fit in his first year of high school when one day last June, while at a friend's house, he was bullied by an older and much larger teen.  Johnathan Rickman, 17, weighed 330 pounds and stood nearly a foot taller than Leonard when he pummeled Leonard and threw him to the ground.

Leonard then grabbed a kitchen knife, chased the older teen out the door and into the street, where he stabbed him once. It was a mortal wound. Rickman died a few minutes later. Leonard White was charged with first degree murder. A jury, perhaps taking into consideration Leonard's size and the prior bullying, convicted him of the much lesser charge of manslaughter in December.

Nevertheless, an Oakland County Circuit Court judge, citing Leonard's "lack of impulse control" sent him to prison for four to 15 years earlier this month. Leonard White, deemed by society too young, too irresponsible, too immature  to vote, drink, drive, make love, go to war, obtain a credit card or sign a contract, was now an adult, in the court's view.

As I sat in the courtroom and watched this boy grapple with his sentence, I was struck by this - he didn't have to shave for this important court appearance - one that will forever change his life - because he's not old enough yet for facial hair. His is the body of a child.

And I would suggest this. His brain is that of a child as well.

Breakthroughs in brain imaging in the last decade tells us what anybody who has ever raised a child already knows - there's nothing in that kid's noggin but a pile of Play Doh.  The all important frontal cortex - the mass of brain matter located right behind our foreheads that involves complex reasoning - is mush in adolescents, and not fully formed until we're well into our early twenties.

A fully formed frontal cortex stops most of us, as adults, from chewing out our bosses, running red lights, sleeping with the sexy neighbor next door while our spouse is out of town, or buying a yacht on a $40,000 salary. The frontal cortex is the policeman in our brain, warning us not to do something stupid.

With kids like Leonard, the policeman has not yet come on duty.

I live with a 15 year old boy. Or rather, I cohabitate with him. To "live" with him implies we share a life, when in truth, he is of an entirely different species and we simply orbit around each other. My son is disorganized and slovenly, sullen and sometimes angry. He spits toothpaste all over the sink.  His personal hygene is hit and miss. He chews with his mouth open. It is akin to sharing a home with an orangutan, only one that can talk.

He is particularly fond of vile language, and has recently taken to dropping the F bomb in casual dinner conversation, hoping no doubt for a reaction from his father and me. His father and I ignore it. Instead, we say, "pass the butter, please," and "God, I can't believe there's another Republican debate on tonight." We know to pick our fights.

In short, he is a cretin, just like every other 15 year old boy walking the planet. He has little understanding of cause and effect. There is limited concept of consequences. It is as if he reinvents his universe every ninety seconds or so - never understanding that the thing he said, or did, two minutes before resonates into the present.

Do you understand, son, that if you choose to wear an oh-so-cool Detroit Lions sweatshirt - instead of your winter coat - to the bus stop in 15 degree temperatures, that you will soon be freezing your ass off?

Even the august justices of the US Supreme Court have come to realize just how dumb kids are, how they are works in progress that cannot be held to adult standards. In Roper vs. Simmons, a 2005 case, the high court forever banned the death penalty for juveniles. In 2010, citing those important brain scans, they found it unconstitutional to send kids to prison for life in cases other than murder. And in November, they agreed to hear a case out of Florida about whether juveniles should be sentenced to life when convicted of murder.



One day two winters ago,  I drove to the Thumb Correctional Facility, a prison in Lapeer, Michigan to interview two boys serving life sentences, convicted as adults of first degree murder. They were both 14 at the time of the crimes. Now, 15, they would never go free.

Dontez Tillman had been running with much older kids in the city of Pontiac in the summer of 2008. Dad was long gone, and mom was overwhelmed with other children. Barely 14, he was out night after night, smoking pot, drinking and wilding with the big guys, trying to look tough.

During the course of three hot July nights, this gang of hooligans, high on marijuana and machismo, beat up homeless men, perfect victims because they were too frail to fight back. Two of those men died. The older teens escaped, but Dontez and another 14 year old Thomas McCloud, weren't smart enough, sophisticated enough, to escape police.

Prosecutors offered these two mopes a deal. Tell us what you know, identify the older kids, and we'll let you plead to second degree murder. You can be out in ten years, at age 25.

Their mothers though, told them no, don't cooperate with police or prosecutors. In their mothers' lives, law enforcement is the enemy. Boys listen to their mothers, particularly when they're in big trouble. They stood trial. Both boys went down as adults for first degree murder. Some of the jurors wept when the verdicts were read. One wept so hard the judge had to stop the proceeding. Both boys cried.


At the prison, I sat in a little room with windows so that the guards could keep an eye on us. Dontez was lanky in that way teen age boys are - all legs and arms, his skinny wrists poking from his prison uniform.

And he was earnest. Taking classes. Keeping his cell clean. Staying out of trouble.  He was doing okay, he said, but looking forward to going home. Back with his mom, and his sisters, back to school. Back to being a boy.

I told him there was no trip home. Did he understand that? That he would never again sit at his mother's table for dinner. No graduating middle school into high school. No drivers training. No dates with pretty girls. No proms or graduation. No wedding. No children. Nothing but the cinder block walls of this prison.

He looked at me and I saw my son, bewildered by this big and confusing world, trying to process information too overwhelming yet for his young brain.

"I know," he said. "But maybe someday?"