American kids and American guns

What if a gunman shot up your child’s school and what you had left were text messages? Or a shoe? Or just the memory of saying goodbye that morning? Or any of a number of things parents hold onto when they’ve lost their hearts.

I have been horrified by gun violence in America for years, and my kids have both had to participate in countless drills at school over those same years. Last spring, I happened to pick Oliver up from school just before a gunman opened fire on another school nearby. On our drive home, he received a message from a friend asking if he knew what was happening at Sidwell and in the neighborhood. The school locked down (many kids still there), police cordoned off all surrounding streets, helicopters flew in, and ultimately we found that Burke was being attacked. I remember Oliver and I sitting in our backyard, listening for hours to the rotors of the circling copters (we live close to school), and me thinking “shit this was close; keep it together for Ol.”

Yesterday morning, I received the first of the above texts from Jack. Halfway through our hour of exchange, I heard helicopters fly in. Shit.

J is at any age where I rarely share anything remotely private about him, but I feel the need to publish our exchange because it is both so simple and also everything. Only later yesterday afternoon, as we rearranged his room and put out his new plants, did we acknowledge to each other how scared we’d been.

I, he, all of us are so fucking sick of this.

One parent compiled some of what they heard their kids and their friends saying once home. Their words are lacerating, and I agree with them completely.

“Even though no one was hurt, it’s not true that nothing happened. Everyone was terrified. People were crying. It was so scary. I don’t want to go back tomorrow.

Don’t pretend like nothing happened. Why is everyone so numb to this? We are so ***king scared. This wasn’t a tornado warning. It’s not fine."

"If this is so terrible, treat it like something that’s terrible."

"If you go to school in America, this is going to happen. We have been training for this since kindergarten. That doesn’t mean that today felt like nothing. I thought there was a possibility of dying."

"Do you know how long an hour is when you think you are going to die?"

Why do put our children, parents, teachers through this? Why do we accept this as ok? Guns are worth this? “Freedom” -such a bastardized word now- is worth this?

Ultimately, thankfully, there was no gun. But there could have been. And look what the threat of one did. And for good reason. The odds aren’t really in the kids’ favor.

Another day of school lost. Another hope of normalcy lost. Kids hiding in kilns (yesterday). Kids showing substitute teachers how to lower the blinds and properly lock the doors (yesterday). Kids shushing each other (yesterday; all the time). Teachers finding long poles to wield should an intruder break in (yesterday; all the time). Parents showing up at school, terrified (yesterday; all the time). Parents and kids texting, with fear slipping into the efforts to mask it with love and strength (yesterday; all the time).

Today, a long-term sub Jack has didn’t show up. He’d called a kid a hideous slur, so good riddance, but shit. Jack said, so casually it was like a sharp knife to soft butter, “yesterday I could have died, and today I have no teacher.”

What are we doing? WHAT ARE WE DOING?