The video was striking: Four teenagers beating up a fifth teen during a violent encounter at a church parking lot in Ossining. At some point local cops said the kid taking the beating got a seven-inch gash across his neck. A 16-year-old girl is also punched in the face, and is threatened with more, at which point she walks away.

This was from a story we ran in recent days. Police said neither of the teens were seriously injured: The gash was apparently not very deep. The video itself, which was posted on YouTube by one of the kids later charged in the incident, has since been pulled off the Internet.

So, why is this on a parenting blog? Well, my very first thought when I saw it was, ‘Oh my God. What if that was my kid?’ It’s a horrifying thought. And what if it was one of our children doing the beating, since peer pressure can be a powerful draw?

To be fair, here’s what doesn’t worry me about this incident: It seems to be a “gang assault” in circumstance only. That is to say, it was a group, or “gang” of kids who are charged. They weren’t Bloods, or Latin Kings, or Hell’s Angels. They weren’t a real gang in the most frightening sense. It was just a group of kids seemingly beating another.

But that’s enough for me. It should be enough for all parents. Because regardless of how the criminal justice system deals with it, it is unacceptable, frightening and brutally dangerous. And it scares the heck out of me.

It doesn’t help when the act is downplayed, as seemed to be the case with a “New York Times column”:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/nyregion/02towns.html?ref=nyregion on this in yesterday’s papers. Was too much made of the incident by my own newspaper? Some might think so, but I don’t. Should the Times have spoken to the Ossining police and not just one of the arrested teens, his parents and his lawyer? Some might think not, but I do.

Because while I know that schoolyard fights are going to happen, it shouldn’t happen this way. We, as parents, should care about it.

I’m sure we’re all familiar with the argument linking kids and steroids: Athletes take performance enhancing drugs, and kids become vulnerable because they either idolize and want to mimick their doping heroes or they’re young athletes who want to perform like the pros and follow the lead by “juicing.”

Well, tonight I heard former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell announce his long-awaited report on performance-enhancing drug use in major league baseball. The debate on this will go on for some time, and the report will be discredited by some, over-hyped by others.

But what hit me most about all this was the call I got in the midst of Mitchell’s press conference today. It was my son. He was watching at his mom’s house and couldn’t believe that some familiar names from his beloved Yankees were named.

Now, the rest of us will debate that list and the players on it for months and years to come. We’ll go on at the water cooler at work about Mitchell’s Boston ties and the high percentage of current and former New York players on this list—along with the lack of ties to the Red Sox. We’ll comment on how most of the players named were on the steroid radar anyway. We’ll speculate on the names that should be there but weren’t. We’ll even defend a player or two on the list, primarily if they play for our team.

But the bottom line is that a kid’s heart was broken today, and that just sucks.

In the last two weeks, my two sons have gone from being healthy teens to walking wounded. First my youngest son, 13, fractured two toes. Then last week, my eldest son, 17, tore the rotator cuff in his right shoulder.

How did they do it? By acting like teens.

My youngest son got into a tussle with his oldest brother, who was attempting to push open the door to his brother’s bedroom. In what was not a brilliant response, the little guy attempted to kick the door closed. Ouch!

Then it was the oldest son’s turn, or as the younger one said, karma. The elder one joined a gym last June to get ready for his senior year on his high school basektball team. He’s been pretty committed to working out, but evidently went to far. He had a little pain Wednesday night after the gym, but returned on Thursday, injuring his shoulder more. Then he played the first game of the season Friday. The result was more pain.

So far I’ve avoided using the phrase, I told you so, even though I had warned him about that hazards of using weights and the need for a day or two off between workouts. I thought he had gotten the message, but he’s stubborn.

Then he went to basketball practice last night night, saying he didn’t shoot from the right side. And that he hopes to play in Friday’s game if he’s not in pain.  I told him absolutely not, but he is stubborn. So my strategy is consult with his doctor today and then talk to his basketball coach.

I know teens have judgment issues. When I was 13, I spent weeks walking atop a narrow fence fantasizing that I was a tight rope walker in a circus. As I improved I walked the fence faster and even at night. I finally stopped after losing my balance one night, landing across the top of the unforgiving iron fence and spending a week in the hospital.

It’s nice when kids don’t need to be hospitalized to learn a lesson.