The very best part of my day comes when I hear from the schools about how parents shouldn’t be worried about the kid who made terrorist threats or the 0ther who brought the gun to school.
“Parents, we know you are concerned and we want to assuage your concerns because we have taken appropriate steps to protect your kids.”
Sometimes they list what those appropriate steps are and sometimes we have to ask for details.
And sometimes your old pal JW is told he is uncivil because he suggests that some people ought to stop fellating their guns and or using them for anal play long enough to consider whether we really do care about not terrorizing our children.
I am not convinced we do because too many people have decided to normalize school shootings.
Too many shrug their shoulders and talk about the disingenuous people of the left who haven’t been honest about the number of school shootings or the laws that just don’t work.
When they say the left provided a number that was way too high I ask if we all agree that there have been five in the last year and they say yes.
I follow up by asking if five is a good number because it is less than 18 and they just move on to their narrative because a gun barrel is a great pacifier for them. Personally I can think of better things, but that is me.
Poe Or Neruda- We’re All Crazy
I hit the wall and try to find something that will help motivate me to hit it again.
Maybe I have PTSD or maybe I am tired of settling for less than while knowing more is possible and available.
Those of a certain age suggest both might be true and say it is the joy of the sandwich generation.
A post on Facebook catches my eye and I see another classmate saying Happy Anniversary in one picture and announcing their divorce in the next.
We may not be of the certain age I mentioned before but we are of the age just before and many of us are starting to recognize the time of heavy child rearing is changing.
Our youngest are finishing middle school and or already in high school. While our babies make us shake our friends asking where the time went our oldest are borrowing our clothes and or looking down upon us, laughing at their short parents.
They are about to leave for or are already in college and we hear the clickety-clack of the train pulling into the station.
Some of us have even reached financial positions in which we can look at the bigger house or fancier car but are thinking twice about whether we really need those things.
If the kids are almost out do we need so much space or is it better to downsize into something smaller but with the nicer amenities we want.
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I have my thoughts and ideas about it all but for the moment I am focused on my friends Neruda and Poe.
Maybe I ought to be concerned about referring to dead men as friends because they can’t provide the full support a living friend can, but they can answer a few questions.
It probably doesn’t matter anyway as we are all crazy.
A Lack Of Civility
Got one of my favorite songs playing and a fire in my belly.
One of the boys tells me I ought to give myself a break for being feistier than normal and I laugh because I can’t quite do that.
The weight of the load is significant and there are moments when it has made me stumble, but it keeps me fired up and pushing to beat it.
If I can keep moving forward I ought to find a way to suck it up a little bit more and be a little more civil.
You catch more flies with honey.
But some of these conversations make my eyes and ears bleed because the stupidity, lack of logic and failure to recognize moral turpitude are awful.
I am not prude and I am not someone who sees life in black and white terms.
But I can’t understand why we think it is ok to normalize school shootings. Can’t understand why so many refuse to have real discussion and engagement.
Maybe it is because I am in the thick of some of this and explaining that I know nothing about lockdowns bothers me.
Or maybe it is because when people ask me for suggestions I get push back for wonder aloud if there would be a benefit to requiring more training and insurance for gun ownership.
I looked at one guy and asked them if he understood English.
“Why would you say that?”
“Because you told me I want to take guns away and I didn’t say that. I said we ought to look into more training and maybe insurance.”
“But that would make it much harder to own guns and that is not fair.”
“Oh, ok. It is not fair that I can’t tell American Airlines that I have flown jumbo jets on my computer so they ought to make me a pilot. If I flew a 757 on a simulator once or twice that ought to serve as reason to let me influence the lives of others.”
“Now you’re being ridiculous. Responsible gun owners don’t need that and criminals don’t follow the law.”
I told him I don’t like talking to liars and walked away. Maybe that was too harsh or too nuanced for him to understand.
Maybe the other stuff is having a bigger influence on my response to certain things or maybe he ought to stop using his guns as sex toys and find a partner or get acquainted with his hands.
I don’t really know.
I just know too many people think it is ok to terrorize our children.
And if you don’t think we aren’t scaring them with lock downs and making them worry about whether schools are safe you are fooling yourself.
It might not be all kids, but enough are being impacted.
Too many suffer from anxiety and depression to pretend there isn’t a problem and while I can’t say I am I medical professional who can demonstrate a connection I can say logic dictates there is a damn good chance there is something.
Regardless the sad reality is we are failing our children when it comes to school shootings and we have to do better.
