Nightmare of juvenile delinquency

Frankie Lymon (right) with Little Richard.

I had heard about the song "I am not a Juvenile Delinquent" by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers but had never heard the song itself. They finally played it on the radio in a story on Lymon on NPR.

That night, I was haunted by a strange dream. I was a juvenile delinquent in a juvenile detention facility. I was wondering how long I was incarcerated for when a girl handed me an article ripped from a magazine. It reported that juvenile delinquents were giving up the Ruger 10/22 rifle in favor of an inexpensive Chinese-made .22 caliber rifle. I didn't know delinquents were that much into rifles.

The clock radio went off. I woke up and listened to the news---a 15-year-old undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenic had killed two classmates and wounded 25 others in his school cafeteria with a Ruger 10/22 rifle.

I figured the dream was from hearing that song and I had known some delinquents in high school who were very proud of their Ruger 10/22---it's the only way I knew what a Ruger 10/22 was. But I told people I had a weirdly prophetic dream.

I heard the song "I am not a Juvenile Delinquent" again a few days ago. That night, I dreamed I was in high school. There was a kid with behavioral problems. He was coaxed into signing a "behavioral contract" and the principal was trying to use it to force him to join the Army.