I originally posted this over at Democratic Underground, but I figured that it's an important lesson to get around. I also see that another story has been posted on shootings - good. Thankfully, my experience never got to that level, but the more people that tell their own personal accounts of school shootings, the more we'll know, and the better chance we'll have to stop them.
If you haven't heard yet, there was a shooting yesterday at a high school up in northern Minnesota, in the Red Lake reservation. I don't actually know when it happened - I slept from 1 PM to 7 PM - but when I woke up, 8 people were being reported dead.
I admit, I was pretty shocked to hear, "Breaking news coming out of Minnesota now..."
I was also amused at hearing nearly every news anchor mispronounce "Bemidji" and "Ojibwe." They even went as far as to claim that Bemidji was a "remote part of Minnesota." Well, sure, it's pretty far up there, but when I think "remote," I think the middle of Wyoming or Montana. Not Bemidji. Although, I suppose, it depends on where you live. They showed the (apparently required for all stories out of Minnesota) video clips with people showcasing stupid Minnesotan accents - but all of this is rather beside the point. It was a shock, though, to hear news of a school shooting, and the worst since Columbine, at that, coming out of
my state. It hit too close to home.
I'm hesitant to tell this story, because it's not really something I like to remember, but I think that it's important for those of you that are parents, or, really, know any kids at all, to realize what a threat school shootings are.
In 2000, I was 10 years old. A year had passed since the Columbine shooting, and I had a friend named Nathan*, who was in my grade; lived on my street; still does. He would tease my friends and me, and we would tease him back. We were friends, I think, because we were sort of in the same social position - nobody particularly liked either of us. He came over to my house all the time; our parents would joke that we were going to get married some day.
I don't remember the date he threatened me, but I remember the place and time. We were waiting for our bus at the corner of a nearby cul-de-sac in the morning, jumping up and down on the snow banks (this
is Minnesota, you know - there was a lot of snow!) and playing on them. Somehow, we got on to the subject of whose parents owned a gun and who had ever used one.
I remember the exact words he said to me, then: "If someone lent me a gun, I'd shoot you and your family first."
It didn't really scare me at the time, but when I got home, something reminded me of Columbine, and I realized that something was not right with what he'd said. I told my parents, who said that if he ever did another thing to me, they would call the police (note: parents, if you take anything out of this story, let it be this: if someone says something like that to your child, or your child says something like that to another kid, do
not wait until "another incident" occurs - because that could be the difference between stopping and permitting a shooting).
We ended up talking to his parents about the incident with the gun statement after he threw a snowball at me. Still, I heard, "Oh, they'll get over it and get married some day."
The story doesn't end there, though.
Five years later, I'm fifteen, and he is, I believe, fourteen. He's friends with some of the "wrong" people - and I know that most people understand the group I'm talking about. The people that get caught smoking; doing drugs; bringing alcohol to school and storing it in their gym locker. Recently, one of his friends brought a gun to school and stored it in his backpack for a few days. He got "expelled" (his expulsion later turned into only a few weeks' suspension) and said that he "forgot about the gun" when it was in his backpack. What frightens me the most is not that this friend had the gun, but that the boy that had threatened to shoot me and my family if somebody lent him a gun had very easy access to one; he would only have to ask for it.
So please,
please, take some interest in your own children, and, if you don't have any, the kids at the local school. Make sure that threats don't turn into disasters like the recent school shooting.
*name changed because I suppose I don't feel too comfortable using his real name.
