上世纪80年代初，我正就读高中。那时我们的英语课程有一篇文章，上面叙述了上世纪70年代初的美国某一大城市的白人男孩有一次因为一点小事差点打起来甚或出人命的故事。同时也提到什么抢劫，毒打，吸毒，流氓集团打群架，这些在美国都是常有的事。总之，它给我们的印象是美国那地方糟得很。现在，我们已为人之父（母）了，我们的孩子也成了青少年，而高中英语课程中提到的那些情况，却时常出现在我们面前。难道他们就是“垮掉的一代”？——救救孩子！！！
这里的相片与视频就是近日抓拍到的两个男孩被毒打与他们的摩托遭砸的一幕。
附高中课程《街道上的流氓集团》
Street Gang
My family is thinking about moving because the neighborhood isn’t what it used to be. You hear about people being robbed and beaten up, and the use of drugs and gang fights and all that sort of thing.
When I was small, I knew everybody around our street; everybody was my friends. Every day all the kids would meet out at the park. We used to chase each other, play games or maybe throw a baseball around. I had no worries then.
Now, sometimes when I leave the house at night or have to meet someone in the park, I am afraid. When I walk down the street, I often see some big boys who look as if they were going to kill anybody that dared to step in front of them. I get really frightened. I go out of their way quickly.
My friends never look for trouble. If we chance to meet one of those gangs, we cross to the other side of the street. The only time we had serious problems with them was a few months ago. A group of us had been up at a pool swimming. We had just come out and were standing around saying good night. One big boy, a friend of mine, had a soda which he was drinking. A group of boys came along. They asked him to give them a drink out of his bottle, and he wouldn’t. He said that he had just bought it, and if everybody took a drink, he wouldn’t have anything left for himself. Well, they started pushing him around, but my friend wasn’t going to stand it. Soon these boys got very rough, but we were all sticking with my friend. So they said that they would give us our choice: either we fight, or we back down. They said they would hear our answer the next day. Then they left. You can guess how worried we were. We are not a fighting group. Nobody among us likes a fight. We’ll do everything we can to keep out of one. We knew once a fight broke out, hundreds of them would show up, and they would all be armed. Many of us would be wounded or killed. But we also agreed that if we did not stand firm, we would lose every right we had. That night, a meeting took place. All of us stood on the side of the street and all of them on the other. One of us went out into the middle to talk things over with their leader. Later he told us he felt very frightened as he could see that they had weapons with them. Our boy told them we had decided never to go over onto their blocks, and that we would never pick a fight with them. But if one of them bullied one of us in our block, we would fight to death. They wouldn’t find a singe coward among us, we said.
They looked at our determined faces. They saw that we meant what we said. Their leader said that they were satisfied.
They haven’t given us any more trouble since then.