shooting aftermath:
AP testing in mid-June
for suburbanites
the gun’s reach has wrath
stretching fifteen miles south
of where my home is
they shuffle in, grin;
calculators, pens ready
for a number game
but they’re missing one,
his seat echoed in “thank-yous”
as they shuffle out
they are just children
trying to grow up and catch
the world’s beauty
my tires spin home,
the grey ponds reflecting love
i cannot give them
I remember newspapers for a week filled with grisly details,
journalists flooding our city like vampires in search of storied blood
I remember crying all day on my twenty-first birthday,
the tears permanent streaks of worry on my cheeks.
I remember thinking, How can I become a teacher now?
and, Nothing could be worse than this.
I remember that it was ten miles from my home,
with faces just like my own now plastered on screens across the world.
I remember thinking that it could never happen again,
that with this media spotlight on the atrocity, it wouldn’t.
I remember my first lockdown, two years later,
kids huddled alongside me under desks like rats in a sewer.
I remember the silent votes of every white man and woman
in charge of our devolving society that grips guns like lifeblood.
I remember clutching my six-year-old child for hours
after twenty of her American peers were murdered
for the love of the Second Amendment.
I remember living in Spain where the scariest sound
was an infantile firecracker celebrating El Día de San Juan
and every door was open for the world to walk into
what it might be like to Not. Be. Afraid.
I remember when I once believed that someone would shout,
Enough is enough! and Congress would listen
instead of filling their pockets with NRA dollars.
I remember my high school in the ‘bad neighborhood,’
before a police officer stood at the door,
before I’d ever heard the word lockdown,
before I even knew what we would become.
At 12:39 a.m., my husband’s phone rang. A text message beeped. He rolled over and turned it off, not revealing to me the message, though I tossed and turned for the next fewer-than-five hours of “sleep” until my alarm startled me into a flood of my own messages. Realities of life in America in 2019.
One person, an 18-year-old child, lost and confused, dead before the day was over, shut down every major school district in a massive metropolitan area today.
This child, infatuated with the Columbine massacre that has been the backbone of her school upbringing, made “a credible threat” to “a school” and kept all the parents, teachers, officials, and students in a state of shock for the remainder of the day.
A girl, a lost girl brought up by school lockdowns, a mass shooting every day of her young life (of all of our lives), school shootings that have taken the lives of teens and six-year-olds, schools surrounded by armed police officers and security guards, and social media filled with conspiracy theorists and bullying…
Was she a credible threat, or was it us?
Is it us?
When will guns ever be considered a credible threat? When will gun stores who sell shotguns to 18-year-old out-of-state children be considered a credible threat? When will assault rifles be considered a credible threat? When will her online banterings (cries for help), the banterings of every filled-with-angst teen, be considered a credible threat?
One “shoe bomber” entered a plane. We remove our shoes in security.
Thousands of children died in car accidents. We put them in car seats.
Thirty babies died in baby swings. We recall the swing.
Are these credible threats?
Just as Sol Pais grew up with the Columbine tragedy as a backstory to her school experience, I have grown into my teaching career, my parenting life, with its everyday reality. I was a junior in college when the front pages of both newspapers in Denver were filled for weeks with the news of, Why? Who? How? All the major networks sent reporters that day for an emergency special. All of America, seeing the horrific scene played out on television, sat in numb disbelief.
Twenty years later, hundreds of school shootings later, there might be a few headlines for a day or two. A growing number of protests. A teary-eyed president’s remarks. An ignorant president’s remarks.
Yet, we have done everything but what we need to do to prevent the credible threat of another mass shooting.
We have lockdowns and lockouts at least four times per school year just for practice. Our kids huddle like rats in cages under desks in a dark corner of the classroom, always acutely unaware if this will or will not be the day they die.
We have more security guards and armed police officers walking the hallways. Some schools even arm teachers.
We watch videos to start the school year showing active shooter training for our district staff.
We have metal detectors, clear backpacks, and every exterior door locked to outsiders.
We have to talk to our kids, all of our kids–our students and our own–on a regular basis about reporting threats to Safe2Tell, about keeping an eye on suspicious students, adults, about what guns can and will do.
But…
The most credible threat in the world, the simplest solution, has never even been considered.
What if we just stopped selling guns? Assault weapons?
What if this 18-year-old child barely knew about Columbine because, after all the horrifying media attention after it occurred, our senators and representatives went back to Congress and represented the victims, rather than the NRA, and passed a bill that could save every credible threat like this from ever happening?
What if, at 12:39 a.m., I could dream a peaceful dream, and not have to think about what I’ll say to my daughters today and my students tomorrow?
There is only one credible threat here, and it is not an 18-year-old child.
It is ourselves. Our government. Our inability to bring the life, liberty, and security that we so proudly proclaim we offer in this “dreamland” of the United States.
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