What were you doing when you were 23?
Me? I was ten pounds underweight, gainfully employed by a major daily, and occasionally experimenting with wonderful pharmacological substances other than Diatabs. Other than driving on the Skyway after massive amounts of tequila and irresponsible slamdancing in punk gigs, that's about the closest thing I've gotten to breaking the law. Well, that and illegally re-taping Air Supply albums. Which is why I'm always fascinated whenever I see some punk younger than me robbing banks and blowing up buildings. I am now 35 years old and for the life of me I still associate all that stuff with "grownups," like having your own checking account and paying real estate mortgage and taking your kid to Timezone.
Twenty-three isn't exactly a number you'd consider young. But for me, anyone less than 35 years of age is still a baby. Maybe it's because of the fact that I have a younger brother who, for me, shall forever be that kid I used to bully around and terrorize and forcibly send to the 7 Eleven to fetch liquor and cigarettes. I know it's weird, but I think of people like Manny Pacquiao and all the current champions of the UFC and the URCC--who are all younger than I am--as the "grownups."
At 23, Ivan Padilla was the leader of his own carjacking gang. His road to perdition when he was only 17. Come to think about it, when I was his age, he was only 11.
I've always looked at a boy's life as one long linear continuum linking that image of you as a baby in a cradle to that image of your cold, drying, badly made-up corpse in a coffin. Somewhere along that line would be connecting points from end to end: your father buying for you that Transformers action figure with the image of you attending your first PTA meeting at your son's school (Or the image of your very first clandestinely smuggled, dog-eared copy of Playboy to the image of your third wife or mistress)...At least that's the conventional narrative, which not everyone is fortunate to enjoy. Sometimes--no, correct that, oftentimes, shit happens along the way. Not all boys get to have daddies who buy them Transformers action toys. Or much less provide them with mint copies of Playboy. Many of them don't even have daddies, period. Or cradles.
I am no stranger to juvenile delinquency and criminal behavior. I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness--the meth-induced variety and, I suspect, Ace Vergel and Charles Bronson movies and Judas Priest cassette tapes. I have also seen very close friends--guys I grew up with--thrown in jail for shooting people in the face. What happened to them along the way I am not quite certain, although it may have started when they would figure in frat-related riots sparked only by suspicious staring. And yes, their moms loved them and their dads loved them and gave them copies of Playboy. But what makes me curious is this: at what point in their lives did they decide that, "Fuck yeah, let's do this." Between breaking a windshield with a baseball bat and pointing a gun at another human being's face lies a delicate line. What made them cross that line?
