Beach(es) Beat

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There is a lot of talk recently about the issue of height restrictions on buildings in Toronto.

This is all very positive and just the sort of dialogue needed to keep this city livable and sustainable but I don't think these discussions are broad enough in scope.

I believe there should be a height restriction placed on teenagers.

If properly enforced, I am convinced it would bring an end to the lack of communication that exists today between fathers and their teenage sons and let me tell you why.

My research indicates that young males have attained a height of six-feet three-inches by the time they are 13 years old and as we all know this is the age when passions and urges and whatever are racing around their brains like it was the track at Mosport.

So this is the time when, historically, fathers and their sons retire to the den for a man-to-man talk and that is exactly when the communication difficulties start. The problem is that the father, who is five-feet 10-inches tall, is basically addressing the second button on his son's polo shirt and for all he knows the lad towering above him could be smoking a doobie and dropping the ashes on the expensive hair piece that Dad brought because he thought it made him look younger. Which it didn't.

Then when the session is over, Dad goes back to reading the financial news and the son complains to his pals that this father never talks to him.

Because of this lack of communication, a teenage nation has gradually evolved with its own customs, manner of dress and its own language, which only other teenagers can speak.

This country doesn't really need another set of two solitudes and something should be done about it before the teenage nation breaks away and joins up with Malta or somebody and I believe I have the answer.

A law should be passed restricting young males to a height of no more than five-feet eight-inches until they are 13, after which it would increase at the rate of one inch a year until they turn 18 when all restrictions would be lifted and they could all join the Harlem Globetrotters.

On a different note, a very heartfelt ceremony will be taking place on Thursday, Sept. 11 at the Memorial Gardens at Eastern and Coxwell avenues. The event begins at 1 p.m. and it commemorates the bombing of the twin towers in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001. I will be a guest speaker and master of ceremonies is Gene Domagala, the man who originated this tribute to our neighbours to the south.