Zachariah Maurer

Published on: Thursday, April 22, 2010

By Brian J. Karem

When I was eight-years-old I became convinced of two things: Never drive your car into a church concession stand, and one day I was going to live and work on the moon.

I became convinced of the latter of course because Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took a short stroll on the moon that year.

I became convinced of the former because that was also the year an inebriated senior at the local high school who went to our church drove his car into the church's concession stand outside of the football field.

The priest at our church, despite the urgings of some of the adults in our parish, didn't have the young man arrested, nor did he condemn him to the fiery depths of the nether regions for his actions.

He said something in church during one of his homilies that I remember to this day. "Boys will be boys," he said in his lilting Irish brogue. "And while we may forgive and forget, boys should never forget what we forgive."

With that invocation he made the boy pay for his misdeed by purchasing the material and rebuilding the concession stand himself.

One fine Sunday after church he made all of us younger children who were attending Sunday school (CCD to the Catholics who understand among us) stay and watch the recalcitrant teen slaving away at building a new concession stand.

"You have to pay for what you break and learn to be responsible," I was told.

Now here comes 18-year-old Zachariah Maurer from Gaithersburg High School some 40 years later.

He and a couple of buddies - in a prank that went astray -  are accused of burning the Gaithersburg High School baseball press box to the ground. The administration calls it a blatant act of vandalism - which of course it was. But they don't want to admit it was a senior prank - which, if the boy is guilty, it also was.

According to some teachers and lacrosse players it stems from a good-natured rivalry between the boys lacrosse and baseball programs - over who gets the most attention, etc.

This is not new in high school sports. A few years back the Magruder principal threatened to shut down fall football because a football player cut down a small tree the girls playing fall sports used as shade. One senior was threatened with arrest and told the school's camera's caught his misdeed. It was a bluff and the suspected logger was never charged.

Not so with Maurer. Though according to the school's athletic director he's never been in any serious trouble before, he's now facing up to 51 years in jail.

The principal, upset with the incident, isn't saying much to us, but according to teachers and students has been furious about the incident.

Fine. I get that. I would be, too. But make Maurer serve a boatload of community service.

The child need not face prison time for his actions - or the actions of his underage buddies who participated.

What the boy needs is to pay for his crime the way our priest made a high school senior pay for his misdeed 40 years ago. Pay for and rebuild the press box - which as I remember wasn't in the best of shape any way.

You shouldn't sacrifice your entire life for one, albeit stupid, mistake - especially if the mistake didn't lead to a loss of life or limb. The only thing suffering is the inanimate press box. Yep, it was stupid. Yep, it shouldn't have happened.

But sending a kid to jail for this crime - for anything longer than 30 days - is counter productive - unless your aim is to create a real criminal.

Let the kid go to college for heaven’s sake and become a productive member of society, not a child who enters prison a juvenile delinquent and emerges a criminal.

Just stupid.

Almost as stupid as President Barack Obama saying "Been there done that," in regards to our returning to the moon.

Really? That's kind of like the European nations saying upon Columbus's return from the New World that they wouldn't bother traveling there any more. "Been there. Done that."

Two lessons I learned at eight and the world is still 40-years behind.

When will we wake up?

Been there. Done that.