Category: default || By jt3y

The Almanac has often pointed out that the Mon-Yough area is no need of its own "Mensa" chapter any time soon.

But we've also got a few people who are just as ... shall we say ... gifted with the "social graces" as they are brilliant.

Take our first examples today, a 19-year-old from Elizabeth and an 18-year-old boy from Forward. Apparently bored with conventional teen-age boy pursuits, such as ...

• watching girls,



• thinking about girls,



• and trying to get girls to acknowledge your existence without gagging

... they decided to run amok.

How, you ask? Drinking beer until they got sick? Drag racing down Route 51? Shooting off fireworks? Shooting off fireworks while drinking beer, getting sick, and drag racing down Route 51?

Nah, that's sissy stuff.

According to Forward Township police and Chris Buckley in the Valley Independent, they hijacked a road excavator at a construction site. Police allege that one of the boys then plowed up utility poles and water lines, knocking out power, cable and water service to residents on River Hill Road and Malerie Lane.

Laughing yet? Me neither.

Neither is PennDOT. This little joy ride is going to delay the reopening of River Hill Road by several days, and it also damaged the road excavator, ripping the tracks off of it. I'd expect it's also going to cost the utility companies a couple of thousand dollars at least.

You may be shocked to learn that police allege this dynamic duo was drinking wine "for about an hour" before the damage occurred. What? Alcohol was involved? What a surprise!

And just to get back to my original thesis --- that we're turning out a lot of Nobel Prize candidates in the Mon Valley --- police say they tracked down one of the boys because he drove his mom's SUV to the construction site and left it there when he fled the scene.

Genius like that gives me faith in the bright, shining promise of Pennsylvania's youth.

Meanwhile, over in Jeannette, my old colleague and cow-orker Paul Paterra reported in the Tribune-Review about a sweet, kind, little old lady who called the cops on her 14-year-old next-door neighbor because of the horrible thing he did to her.

He meowed at her.

Twice.

According to Paul's story in the Trib, the lady began complaining to police after the kid's pet cat --- as cats do --- kept getting loose and running through her yard.

The boy's mother finally gave the cat away "to keep the peace in the neighborhood."

Now, if you were 14 years old, and your neighbor made you get rid of your cat, would you be mad?

Darn tootin'.

So, whenever the lady walked past his porch, he meowed at her.

Personally, I'd have done more than meowed at her, so I applaud this kid's restraint. He could teach the brain surgeons in the road excavator incident a thing or two.

Anyway, the lady called the cops, and the cops cited the kid for harassment. His defense attorney says the police are "wasting the court's time," and I tend to agree.

But put yourself in the cop's place: If you had somebody calling the station every 20 minutes, complaining that the neighbor kid is meowing, I suspect you'd issue a citation, too, just to get her off of your back.

The district magistrate hasn't made a decision yet. I think he ought to fine the kid a ball of yarn, and make him pay one saucer of milk to the lady as restitution. I think she'd enjoy it. She's been plenty catty so far.

I hope the judge doesn't send him to juvenile detention, that's all. I can just see him --- like Arlo Guthrie in "Alice's Restaurant" --- sittin' on that Group W bench with all of them mother stabbers and father rapers:

"What you in for, kid?"

"Meowing at old ladies."

On the other hand, he's likely to meet people in the clink who are 10 times nicer than his next-door neighbor, so juvie hall has got that going for it.