Stephen Yeargin

I sat down in the chair and immediately reached for my iPhone. It is a force of habit, one that I have developed in the little under a year that I have owned one. I was in a Starbucks section of the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Hendersonville’s Streets of Indian Lake development, so a fair amount of people were bustling here and there. A security guard came over to talk to one of the baristas sitting there on her lunch break. He was a much older gentleman, but one could tell that he was rather annoyed.

“It is all these kids around here. Where are their parents?” he exclaimed. “I went up to a group of them last night and asked where their rides were. They gave me some excuse about flat tires or something,” he continued. “I told them to hurry up and call another ride before we turned them over to the police, and one of them just said ‘You’re mean.’ I cannot believe them!”

The exasperation was very evident. He went on to say that the Hendersonville Police Department was reporting an increase in shoplifting and vandalism, almost all of it being tied back to the 13-17 year old crowd. I listened as he said they were on the brink of putting new curfew rules in effect and instituting fines for parents that simply dumped their teenagers off at the movies unsupervised.

I had not really intended on listening in on the rather one-sided conversation across the way from me, but I did start to think about it. The kids dumped off at the movies for the evening leave the theater to walk around the bookstore and other shops in large groups. Most are harmless, snickering at the somewhat explicit sections of the store and cracking jokes about topics that are just beyond their understanding. Peer pressure or whatever social phenomenon leads them to break, deface or steal things. Some sneak a cigarette or two to look more “adult.”

For the shop owner, it is a losing proposition. They cannot very well stop a group of teenagers at the door and shoe them out. Likewise, they cannot have someone follow them around until the inevitable disruption occurs. There is also the chance that being overzealous could damage their reputation with actual paying customers (assuming that the teenagers in question never intend to buy anything).

The security guard sounded relieved that new ordinances and guidelines were being proposed to deal with the problem. It really is a shame that it had become such an issue. I grew up in a small town where finding a group of teenagers together anywhere but at a sporting event or on Front Street on a Friday night was an extreme rarity, so I can claim innocence on being that disruptive.

As I left the coffee shop, another group walked in. The mixed gender group all dressed in designer clothes spent most of their time laughing, texting other friends and moving along in one big herd. The security guard from the minutes prior lumbered towards them.

I suppose it was just another night at the office for him.