This is the third attempt at a today’s article. The first attempt was completely trashed, because, well, it lost all of its meaning after the first few sentences, and the second attempt has been arbitrarily rescheduled to sometime in 2011, although I’m not sure I’ll ever really let it get published. It was a little more open and honest about things than I really am ready to be.
They say the third times the charm, right?
I’ve decided the best way to keep my mind focused on what I actually want to say, without contributing to the problem, is to talk about a completely different situation than the one thats been dancing around inside my mind for the last few days. I hope you can figure out the paralells on your own.
When I was in high school, a different solution to the problem of not fitting in became very common.
Students decided that the only way to deal with bullies was to take them out.
I was sitting in my own high school dealing with not really liking my class mates on April 20, 1999, when two states over, a group of students walked into theirs and start a killing spree that would become the media event of the year. It was horrible and tragic, and it made a great headline for every news media outlet in the country.
16 other school shootings would happen between Columbine and the day I graduated High School. 29 people would loose their lives in that 13 months. I can’t look back on those days, and not be reminded of how often we were told that not only could students come into the school and gun each other down, but that we would. My own school put together all kinds of programs and rules to keep it fresh in our minds. It was like they only time they stopped talking about the last student to go postal was when they started talking about the next student to go postal.
They made these kids famous, and I can’t help but think they are responsible for at least some of the deaths that occurred during that year.
Kids bully kids. Its a problem in the United States. We should talk about that, constantly.
We should talk about how parents and media influence their kids to turn them into monsters, and how parents can help their kids deal with the problems in their lives.
We shouldn’t talk about the kids that find a final solution. All that does, is let them inspire other kids.