If it weren't for the circumstances, it would almost be funny. You never expect the lives of people who you've never met, never will meet, to affect you so much. When you wake up in the morning, unaware of the world outside your quiet little sphere, you never think that by dinner, lunchtime, or even breakfast everything can change drastically and yet you have little or no experience with what has happened, except for what you have seen on the news, heard on the radio, or read in the newspaper. How the world has changed in just the 22 years i've been on it. When i was a child (tho chronologically not that long ago, it now seems like eons to me) things like what occured on April 20 in Colorado never happened. And i only graduated from high school a mere four years ago. Yes, there were guns, there were drugs, there was violence, i'm not naive... but kids simply did NOT walk into their schools and start shooting, for whatever reason. Things were so much simpler then.
The major events that have shaped the world in my lifetime i remember vividly. I can close my eyes and still see my third grade classroom, Mrs. Johnston sitting on a desk with all of my classmates sitting around her. I remember the exact sound and tremors in her voice as she told us of the Challenger exploding shortly after liftoff (an event we were supposed to watch, and i can now say thankfully, were unable to). I can remember in seventh grade, sitting in my history class and discussing the fall of the Berlin Wall, an event that even our young minds never believed would occur in our lifetimes. I remember the fear i felt in eighth grade when we were sending troops to a country that i had never heard of in my life, worrying that my brothers or their friends would be sent off to some foreign land, that i may never see them again. I remember the weeks before my freshman year of high school, the coup in Russia, the fall of the communist regime there, the terror and bloodshed that followed in the land i had always known as the USSR, the country in which my sister was born...watching her watch the destruction of the town where she had spent the first decade of her life. I remember my sophomore year, when the standoff in Waco ended in such horror. And those are just a few...Tiennamen Square, the Iran-Contra hearings, assassination after assassination of foreign leaders, plane crashes, bombings, hostage situations, i could go on for pages...but even with all of that, even two years ago, i never would have expected that by the close of this century, there would be no fewer than seven times that children would walk into their schools and start shooting at countless numbers of people.
And so the game of who is to blame for all of this has begun. It started before the crisis was even over. We blame the children responsible, we blame their parents, we blame the news media, television, movies, music... we try to find answers and explanations where there are none. So who is to blame? Is there one single group or person that can be held responsible? I believe the answer to that is an emphatic NO. If anyone is to blamed, then everyone should be. Similarly, if any _thing_ is to be blamed, then everything should be. There is no simple solution to such a complex situation. I coud sit here and blame everything under the sun for why they did what they did. And with the proper explanations, i'd be right. But what would be the point? What is done is done, and there is no erasing it. To point fingers doesn't help us get to the root of the problem and try to find a way to solve it. And maybe there is no solution. Perhaps we have reached the point of no return. I wish i knew.
But what has angered me more than what those two boys did, are the simple statements made by supposed experts, the way the media has sensationalized all of it, and the naive reactions of everyone involved from teachers to neighbors to once again, the media. Covering this last point first, time and time again in the broadcasts, i have heard all persons involved comment on how they never imagined that such a thing could happen in such an affluent neighborhood/school. Hearing people say 'i'd always thought that these things only happened in ghettos, in places where people have no money' only shows the ignorance we like to grab hold of as a security blanket. Tragedy is blind to money. On the sensationlism by the media, i am only going to comment briefly about the fact that from this moment, i will never again watch another news program on CBS. I have not seen their coverage of this tragedy, but while going thru the channels this morning, i saw the 'headline' they chose which was in incredibly poor taste. The words i do not remember, but the image of three words, typed on three scraps of notebook paper, with the first letter of each word smudged with blood disgusted and offended me. But perhaps, what angered me more than all of that, was what i heard one man say, i believe it was on 20/20...'These are not normal children. Normal children do not do this.' What, praytell is a normal child? Is it the captain of the football team? The head cheerleader? The braniac who wins all the education awards? The editor of the school newspaper? Are these people any less likely to snap and go on a shooting spree than the loners who don't fit in? As one of those loners, and yet one who was accepted by everyone, i can honestly tell you that especially when it comes to teenagers, there is no such thing as normal. ANY person, child or adult, can go over the edge and resort to such violence. Not only do normal children do this, normal _people_ do this. And one of the reasons behind this is that no one pays attention. That 'normal' child can be going thru some very serious pain that others would rather simply ignore than acknowledge. Perhapes THAT is the solution. Pay attention to what is going on around you. If your child is making pipe bombs in the garage, do something about it. If you're not aware of that fact, then there is something seriously wrong with your parenting abilities. If those two boys had been _listened_ to, this whole tragedy might not have taken place. But perhaps tragedy is not the only thing in this instance that is blind. Perhaps we as a people are too. But, there i go placing blame...
Until next week i remain...
Your good friend,
OnyxSkye
