Waging WAR on teenage tearaways

IT WAS actually the ticket and information caravan parked on the town plaza during our recent harbour festival that gave me the idea: a one-stop shop for the parents of moody teenagers.

C’mon, mom and dad, when these weedy weapons of mass disruption have got you chewing the Zanex and plinking angry tears into your double-strength espressos, it's war!

But it’s a war we at the Wild Angels Response (WAR) unit are here to help you win.

The unit will help you contain this conflict — or end it. Rapidly and with minimum collateral damage. Only kidding …

Now the hormones may be exploding all around you and the verbal shrapnel zinging your ears at home but we’re not allowed by law to help you there. But outside? We’ve got your back, peeps; ready to defuse, disarm and deliver little Johnny or Jane home safely. Alive. Parents Plus Plus, if you like.

Maybe son number two is magnetically drawn to the naughty goings on in the town’s shadier parts? No worries: we know where they — and he — are and we will have him home in no time. He will soon get over the shock. Call it tough love. He’ll understand. Sometime.

Your 12-year-old daughter skiving off for a secret rendezvous with that hair-gelled minor Lothario in the woods? No biggie there: Juliette and her Romeo will be parted before they’ve even met. Love hurts, but not as much as low-voltage electricity.

What’s that you said there … something about talking more to the little moppets, counselling them? Listen, if reason and responsibility were big with these guys and they didn’t try to kick the door off its hinges every time we say ‘no’, we would talk. The war is over, then we negotiate bedtimes and how to complain without immediately going into Rumpelstiltskin overdrive.

Listen, we’re talking here about people who went to bed one night aged 12 or so, all snuggledy and grateful for the best mom and dad in the world and woke the next morning in Stalag Azkaban, run by Despot Dad and Martinet Mom, the worst parents ever — and certainly the strictest, duh!!!

Out front the WAR unit has the usual snack, taxi and phone-charging services, and funds for Converse trainers and other urgently needed items, but at the back, concealed, is where the really interesting stuff happens.

Come in, we will show you around.

Right, over here, in front of General Zod — I mean Mr White — we have our standard giant computer screen. That’s the Google street view map of your town up there — participating parents have the accompanying app, WarApp? — so we can cover all our kids. Keep tabs on them via the map, and move to intercept or redirect.

See those moving dots there? The circular ones are on foot, the rectangular ones in motorised vehicles. The blue are the signed-up parents, the rest are kids, the colours relating to age and the shades correlating with propensity for wreaking havoc. For instance, if we see a bright red circle moving swiftly towards a known trouble spot, it’s all systems go.

It’s a bit like that Hailo taxi app thingie: I can tell its Johnny Blogs, aged 12, so I WarApp the parent nearest the scene and Johnny is intercepted - or caught rotten, depending on how soon our blue Mariah or Martin can get there.

If he or she can’t make it in time, we’ve got some real doozies lying in wait for our wayward offsprings.

Look over there, to the left, see the control panel that Storm, aka Mrs Flynn, is operating today? You can tell how much she enjoys her work — that purple dot heading for the habour pier she has sworn blind she won’t go near again after the accident the last time is Storm’s 11-year-old daughter, by the way. We’ll deal with that shortly.

All those switches Storm is using are connected to the cunningly concealed weapons at and around the usual trouble black spots — including the pier, of course. And elsewhere — sorry, that’s classified.

She has a choice of gas, electricity, water or flour. All adjustable. She has several to choose from at each location, placed at various heights, so the miscreants cannot see where the attacks are coming from.

First, she checks in with Emperor Ming (Mr Ryan, the park-keeper — a pretty cool cover, eh?) who has planted the micro-cameras hidden all over town and is running them this afternoon from that bank of screens to the right of the main one. Like a TV director, he calls up the images from the relevant cameras for Storm, using that row of buttons there, and she can take the appropriate action. Or aim.

A little bit of sneezing gas from behind the funnel on that little red fishing boat - you can see it there now on screen two which Ming has just called up — just as her daughter passes should do the trick there. It will wear off in 10 minutes or so. She won’t want to go near the water anyway.

You might like the new attachment we have developed for the water shooter — the usual adjustable cold or warm jet — that is already proving particularly effective in breaking up inappropriate love trysts. A fine, warm mist is now directed down at the young couple, and causes the boy’s hair gel to sag, leaving him with a mussed-up barnet that will have him crimson with embarrassment — you know how they are about their hair! He’ll be scurrying home. Mortified.

A few soothing noises when he slinks in the back door and your little lamb might even join you for that family movie you never watch together anymore.

Anyway, that’s maybe enough information for now … if you’re still interested in signing up, grab one of those forms on the counter. Before you go, check out screen six … isn’t that your boy who just knocked the head off that prize rose in Mr White’s garden?

ENDS