These Things Just Should Not Happen.
The Pittsburgh area school stabbings that took place on Wednesday happened 10 miles from my own high school. My best friend’s boyfriend (later her husband) went to Franklin Regional, where the stabbings occurred.
After Sandy Hook, I was certain that nothing could affect me as profoundly again. But somehow, this stabbing incident has hit home hard.
When I took Dylan (and later Shane) to his first day of kindergarten, I bought him a new lunchbox and a pencil case. I made sure he had a jacket with his name in it, sharpened his thick, black pencils, and brushed his hair just so. He put on his sparkling new backpack and shuffled into the classroom with all the other kids.
Every day, I send my kids to school with the exact same feeling as I had that first day. It’s great that they’re growing up and learning to be independent. I’m hopeful that they’re learning things that will help in their adult lives. And every day, I’m just a little sad to see them wander toward the front door, looking around for their friends.
And every day, I recognize that I might never see them again.
I shouldn’t have to believe I might never see them again. I shouldn’t have to worry about stabbings and shootings and mass murders. Because these things just should not happen.
But they do. And the media never shuts up about it.
I try to remember that these things happened long before television. Worse than Sandy Hook (if that’s possible) was the Bath School mass murder in Michigan. But I’d never heard of it – because it happened before television was able to sensationalize it and broadcast it worldwide.
I stopped watching the news for years shortly after 9/11 because my son, who wasn’t even walking yet, sat in his bouncy chair and watched me stare at the TV for days. It didn’t seem fair to be so obsessive about the death and destruction when my baby didn’t understand what was going on.
Right after that, the D.C. sniper came around, shooting random people on the streets. We were in baby music class when the three-week rampage started – less than 3 miles from where the first victim died.
Baby Dylan and I sat inside the house for almost the entire three weeks.
I only ventured out once, with my mom, to get gas and groceries. We drove 45 minutes from home, thinking we’d be safer there – but were still so scared that Mom dropped me off at the front door – and we both ran into the grocery store as fast as we could. I remember ducking down while putting the gas pump in the tank, terrified that I’d be shot any second.
And now, 12 years later, I want to grab my child (300 miles from where the stabbings occurred) and run screaming to … where?
Where would we be safe? Sitting in the house may have been safe with a sniper about, but there are “snipers” everywhere. We can’t go to the movies without a mad gunman coming out and shooting us. We can’t go to school without an agony-filled teenager killing us. We can’t get in an airplane or we may end up at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.
And God knows, we’re more likely to die in a car crash than anything else. So we should probably all just sit inside our houses, never venturing out, never risking our safety for the right to live in this society.
I always thought we were better off here in America than anywhere else in the world. We have better resources: jobs, healthcare, education, freedom. We aren’t (yet) being attacked by another country. We don’t have to stay inside and pray that a bomb doesn’t hit the house.
Although we could.
And if we’re going to live life terrified about walking out the front door to go to school, we may as well just sit at home all day, every day. And pray.