I'll never become one of them.

Never one to throw my hands up in the air in exasperation and say, "The kids these days." Never one to conclude that today's youth are careening without brakes down a highway to hell.

I was one of those kids once -- heck, we all were. Who hasn't felt the harsh judgment of an older generation?

But now, on the eve of my 50th birthday, I'm teetering dangerously toward becoming one of them. The crotchety, the reactionary, the doom-saying. I've developed grave concerns that the kids aren't all right after all.

Of course, I know better. The vast majority of our young people are doing just fine. But in our high-speed digital planet, those who reside in the murky depths tend to drown out the majority churning away on the surface.

Given our 24-hour access to sensationalism, it's difficult to maintain a sense of perspective. And it must be said that the kids are giving us plenty of reason to doubt.

Doubt crept in Sunday night when a 6-month-old Waverly boy was shot in the face. Doubt turned to shock when his 18-year-old mother was among three teenagers arrested in the shooting.

This was hours after I'd received a shocking Internet link -- brought to us initially by YouTube and now on mediatakeout.com -- of a 16-year-old boy placing an 8-month-old infant on an inflatable pillow and propelling the baby across the room.

The past month's tragedies have included the shooting death of a 14-year-old boy in the East End and the slaying of an 18-year-old football star in Powhatan County. Teenagers have been arrested in both slayings.

And as if our youths need to be placed further at risk, a 17-year-old boy was injured in a shooting yesterday afternoon near a city pool filled with children.

Are kids turning on kids, or is this simply a rough patch of road? After all, the trend in Richmond is toward fewer juvenile deaths -- eight in 2006, three last year, one so far this year, according to police spokeswoman Mary-Hope Gangwer.

But even as the urban killings abate, there have been startling incidents in rural Virginia -- the Waverly baby shooting, the Powhatan slaying and the arrest of a Louisa County man and woman in April after cocaine was found in the bloodstream of their two toddlers.

Youth is supposed to be a time of innocence. When that notion is shattered, we round up the usual suspects to blame -- societal permissiveness, moral drift, media violence, babies having babies. But none of these explanations buys us much satisfaction.

Increasingly, the explanations sound like a cop-out. No event -- from a bullet in a baby's face to carnage on a college campus -- seems capable of shocking us toward action en masse. The bursts of gunfire rouse us only temporarily from a perpetual slumber.

Perhaps it's simply too much to process emotionally. But such events as the recent shootings should be setting off alarms. And it must be said that too many young people have become numb to the violence around them.

A healthy society does not allow its young to be devoured like this. Whatever the cause, we've got to save the children from us, and from themselves, so they can live long enough to pass concerned judgment upon their young.
Contact Michael Paul Williams at (804) 649-6815 or mwilliams@timesdispatch.com.