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| Home | By now you've no doubt heard all about
it. Colorado high school. Two students armed with guns and
homemade bombs. A death toll greater than you can count on your
fingers. Among the bodies still lying in the school are those of
the two assailants.
News of the shooting is everywhere. Every channel this morning has reporters on the scene, standing in the pre-dawn darkness and talking with neighbors, associates, classmates of the two students. Many of the interviewees are high-school boys with hair dyed black. Yearbook photos of the Trench Coat Mafia march across the screen, accompanied by sad, sad people. Every radio station is abuzz with the story. Viewers call in to express their outrage and thinly-masked fear. On CNN's web site I learn that the Colorado Rockies and Denver Nuggets cancelled games last night. Real life has managed to eclipse the world of manufactured entertainment. Even at the dentist's office there is no escape. "Isn't it awful what happened in Colorado?" the dental hygenist asks. Since she is currently poking my gums with a sharp metal stick, I can only gargle affirmatively. "And those bombs. Where did they learn to make them? From the Internet? From a family member who was in a war?" I gargle again. "I like the Internet for some stuff, but people know too much these days." Some more scraping and poking, and she goes on. "The school knew those boys were in that 'Trench Coat Mafia.' Why weren't people making sure that they didn't do anything? How could they be wandering the halls? When I was in high school people couldn't wander the halls." She is still engaged in the gum-poking, so I cannot tell her of my high school years as an outcast who ran with other outcasts -- it wasn't until my senior year that I gained any measure of popularity. I sometimes wore a black trench coat. I did a book report in Contemporary American History on Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book." Was I a risk? Should I have been watched? I fear the draconian measures which may follow this latest tragedy. Shall we put flesh on the ghosts of high-school paranoia? And yet. And yet, and yet, and yet. Will there be any reaction left in a week, a month, a year? There have been shootings in schools before, but can you remember where they were? The only one I remember well is the one in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and that only because Jonesboro is a friend's home town. Has this kind of horror become commonplace? All day long a scene from the movie "Brazil" has been showing on my mental movie screen. In it, diners are enjoying a meal in a restaurant when a bomb explodes. Rubble sails through the air, a glass wall shatters -- and the diners don't even interrupt their conversations. They merely talk louder, the better to be heard over the latest act of terrorism. Our forgetfulness no doubt goes hand in hand with our helplessness. What can we do besides shake our heads and wring our hands and wonder what is wrong with the world? We are stymied by our inability to detect the flaws in a child's mind, frustrated by ready access to weapons, awash in a sea of information that tells us about the workings of both cars and car bombs. All we do is pray for the survivors, and hope that this will be the last time we face this problem. And forget, or risk a crippling fear of the what-might-be. As I sit outside and write this, it's a beautiful day. Warm sun, cool breeze, a sky that holds just a few wisps of cloud: everything I could want from a spring morning. A friend of mine has written a book that is to be published next year. It contains a scene in which some schoolkids shoot some other schoolkids. Yesterday the person in charge of selling the foreign rights for that book contacted my friend and told him that the incident in Colorado will probably net them an additional $10,000. Business as usual all 'round. |
