Children can be so cruel sometimes. Some kids spend their entire middle and high school careers poking fun at others, but does that warrant shooting them? Of course not, and any levelheaded person, or even one without that level of head can see that.

I am talking about the recent disaster that was averted in New Bedford last week. There is a problem with the youth of America. It is evident every time you pick up the paper or turn on the television to witness yet another high school shooting or an attempted conspiracy that involves children that have been driven to the edge by their peers.

Driven to the edge by their peers? Kids have been making fun of other kids since the dawn of time. I guarantee if you went back to the prehistoric period you would find cave teenagers making fun of one another. “Thog, you’re fire isn’t burning as brightly as ours, we beat you up after lunch.”

I am, in no way, making light of these situations, but I am trying to prove a point. Sometimes people are mean and there’s nothing you can do about it because it’s just a part of growing up.

Unless, of course, you buy some guns and explosives and make sure that everyone can claim that you are such a good kid after you attempt to annihilate large groups of your peers. Then, it’s fine. Then people will study you and try to figure out where our society has gone wrong and try to decipher what we could’ve done to help you so you didn’t get the bag beaten out of you in the boys’ locker room. And it’s also fine because the media will automatically question how many Marilyn Manson CDs you own and why you wear black. And then there’s the obligatory background check on your parents.

The young boys that were the “ring leaders” (the media uses this term as if these kids are Big Top performers) in the New Bedford case were fathered (and I use the term loosely) by a heroin and alcohol addict.

Oh, there ya go. The rest of America will read that in the papers and see that the response to “How could this have happened?” is an easy one. It’s the parents. It’s always the parents. If the parents abusing drugs isn’t enough proof for you, the boys, apparently, had what the Boston Globe calls “a healthy predilection for marijuana.” Thank God then, at least we can rule out bong hitting as an accomplice in this crime. The next time my mother yells, “What’s that smell?” I can respond with the simple, “Just a healthy predilection.” It’s also reported that their group of friends dubbed themselves the “freaks” of New Bedford High. One of the brothers, Eric McKeehan, went to grade school in the inner city and talked “black.” He also made the mistake of listening to Tupac early on in his youth.

I read this information in yesterday’s Globe. It’s yet another teenage shooting plot where we struggle not to find answers to the problem, not to find a solution (no, that would be ridiculous), but where we strive to place a blame on something, anything we can dig up.

I’m sorry, I am all for human individuality. Where better to start practicing yours but in high school, where you are freshly forming your identity? But if you’re going to dub yourselves as “freaks,” kids are going to make fun of you. Personally, I’d find it refreshing that they know their social status and don’t try to hide the facts that they’re on the bottom rungs of the cursed high school social ladder. The media is clearly stating that they had friends, that they had one another, alluding to a strong network of support. Still they plotted, and thankfully, were stopped.

I have been friends with prom queens, football players and complete nerdlings; everyone has insecurities. High school is a difficult time for everyone, even the pretty people. I wasn’t made fun of (too much) in high school, so I have no idea what these kids have been going through.

But whatever it is, surely there is another way to deal with it then shooting up the cafeteria.

Life isn’t fair most of the time. Kids beat other kids up. People don’t like you because you’re different. Sometimes people are just losers in the eyes of others and they get cemented into a certain stereotype. Suck it up. Everyone feels out of place at some point, and the only thing you can do is hang out with the friends you do have and make fun of the cool kids.

If you want to wear a black trench coat and play Dungeons and Dragons, so be it, but realize that in reality, not everybody’s going to accept that. People are shallow because they don’t understand the need to be different. The high school junior sporting the Abercrombie sweater is going to be accepted and the kid wearing the black spiked collar isn’t (wool isn’t as threatening as metal spikes).

People reject what they don’t understand. Our society is completely guilty of foolish speculation when dealing with these cases because we don’t accept the truth about our social dynamics. Until we do that, we will continue making desperate attempts to lay blame in all the wrong places.