Steubenville is only 4 hours away

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/highschool--steubenville-high-school-football-players-found-guilty-of-raping-16-year-old-girl-164129528.html
"Drunk on their own small-town greatness, they operated unaware of common decency until they went too far, wrote too much, bragged too many times and, finally, on a cold Sunday morning, were hauled out of a small third-floor courtroom as a couple of common criminals."

Poppy Harlow for CNN - "Incredibly difficult, even for an outsider like me, to watch what happened as these two young men that had such promising futures, star football players, very good students, literally watched as they believed their lives fell apart,"

Here are just a couple examples of what I woke up to this morning. I don't know those boys. I don't know the town. I don't know anything other than the info I found on the internet, as I have followed this case. It puts a pit in my stomach. A girl was so drunk that she couldn't consent to anything, driving around in a car full of boys for hours, going from party to party, puking more after every stop. If no one had videoed any of this or texted all this, if these boys hadn't been caught, no one would even care about this. Tens of thousands of teen girls are driving around drunk just like this every weekend. EVERY WEEKEND. Boys are driving around thinking they are entitled to the life they are living: drinking, drugs, uncaring and unprotected sex. Little girls having no respect for themselves or others. Little boys having no respect for themselves or others.

Who are these boys and girls?

Well they are the boys who once played with cars and action figures in their rooms as toddlers. Maybe they slept with a teddy bear or blanky at night after their parents tucked them in and kissed them goodnight. They went to the parks and learned how to swing the swings. Maybe their moms taught them how to pump their feet to swing without help. Their parents probably watched them off to the bus on their first day of Kindergarten, maybe even packed their pb&j sandwiches. Maybe they went to their friends houses for sleepovers on weekends.

And the girls? Many of them played princess dress-up, played house with their dolls and cooked in their play kitchens. They made cookies and cake with their mommys. They tried on their mom's high heeled shoes. These girls dreamed of being on tv or famous singers. They had play dates with other little princesses, and stuck their tongues out at the boys on the playground. Their parents watched with pride as they first learned to ride their bikes without training wheels. They learned how to swim at the Y. They played soccer with all the other little girls when they were of age.

Who are these kids? Well when put this way, they sound an aweful lot like all of our kids. Could they be yours? Mine? Could we, me and you, be producing young adults who not just live like this, but don't mind living like this? Don't see a problem in this?

Kids who don't think about what could happen to them if they get so drunk that they cannot even stand up on their own. Kids who don't worry about what tomorrow might look like after a night like this. Is this the new "kids just being kids"?

Are we the complacent parents who don't care to really know where our little boys and girls are late at night anymore? They are 15 or 16 years old, they are fine. We are all just fine. Just kids being kids. They will be fine.

After all, they are only 4 hours away from me and my little girls. Only 4 hours. That is mighty close.