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KIDS THESE DAYS:Politeness can go a long way

Had you or I seen them at a convenience store, we would have considered them the stereotypical youthful slackers found in any city.

They all wore T-shirts with a message that they wanted everyone to read, and they were of the right age to qualify as the object of an adult’s ire.

But this was a Saturday, and while many of their peers were still in bed, or playing video games or doing who-knows-what, these five young men were canvassing our Costa Mesa neighborhood for donations.

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They were all members of the Estancia High School football team and their T-shirts read simply, “Estancia Football.” They were neat in appearance and polite in their speech.

And when they asked me for money I did not hesitate. As many of us do when we give money, I wondered whether it was enough; whether it was enough not just to help make a difference in the football program, but enough to encourage these enterprising young men to continue working the area that Saturday.

After all, it’s easy to get discouraged when your results are less than spectacular.

So it is with football.

“How’d you do this year?” I asked as I was writing the check.

“Pretty good,” was the reply, “but now we have a new coach.”

“Only one thing really matters each season, though,” I said.

The fellow who was at the front of the pack, the spokesman, gave me a puzzled look.

“Mesa,” I replied, “You beat Mesa.”

He smiled broadly.

Just as Newport Harbor High School and Corona del Mar High School duke it out in every sport and live or die by the results, so it is between Estancia and Costa Mesa High Schools.

For all four schools, a mediocre season is made fabulous by a victory over cross-town rivals. These kids are the ones who will take the spirit of this rivalry to college, if they choose to go.

But in college, they may find that athletics is not a priority for many students or administrators. The example that comes to mind is UC Irvine, which has a baseball team that just reached the College World Series for the first time.

As this newspaper pointed out a few days ago, UCI’s students weren’t interested. Some of them didn’t even know the school had a baseball team.

It’s odd how so many times in recent years, college athletics is criticized as being the focus of too much attention. But when we read about a school that could care less about sports, that’s news, too.

I suppose that once again, balance is the key.

The Estancia football players were out soliciting donations just a week after another group of athletes from the same school were cooking cheeseburgers at the Fish Fry to raise money for the baseball program.

The baseball players gave up their Saturdays, too, my son among them, proving once again that kids will go beyond the call of duty, including listening and learning in the classroom, if they perceive a benefit.

In that way, they are the same as adults.

I CAN’T HEAR YOU

He was a boy about 4 years old who I saw in a supermarket a few days ago. In his hand was a popular model of an MP3 player and he was dancing in rhythm to the music in his headphones.

This was only a five-second encounter — sort of like looking at one frame of an entire movie — but all I could think of was how we have provided our kids with another way to tune out their parents, no pun intended.

Even if the boy’s mom or dad let him use the player for only a few minutes, there are millions of little kids who are listening for hours each day.

And while I’m happy that at least these kids aren’t watching a television or a computer monitor, I still wonder about all of the conversations they’ll never have with mom or dad.


  • STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer. Readers may leave a message for him on the Daily Pilot hotline at (714) 966-4664 or send story ideas to [email protected].
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