Flash Fiction Cover Art for “Love, Always” – Graphite Watercolor Pencil on paper. Copyright 2013 Totsymae
Folk may say, and it’s common in the south, that we’re living in perilous times. That’s been said since I was a girl and it’s been a long time since I’ve been that. The only difference between then and now is that I watch the news and I didn’t do too much of that as a kid. I was foot-loose and fancy-free in some respects. Other folk watched the news for me and all I was concerned about was playing with my tea sets, shooting marbles and racing boys up and down the street. I?kicked butt!?I was a Tomboy to my heart but I was girly too.
I wore little girl dresses in the thick of cold weather when I went to school on the city bus for awhile ’cause I was out of my district. Up until fifth grade, I went to school in Atlanta. The same school my mom and her siblings went. We had one principal and I don’t think there was an assistant. There was one teacher who thought he was one pretty much and he walked about biting his bottom lip, looking to take a swing at some kid who was acting up with a taped up ruler. And yes, it met my backside plenty of times. I was a cutter every now and then.
I clearly remember there were no resource officers in my school. In high school, there wasn’t one either. Just a guy who monitored the parking lot to make sure unauthorized folk weren’t hanging about and kids skipping class. I never skipped class ’cause I didn’t have a car. I can only guess I might’ve done it from time to time if I had.
Just last year, my son, Mr Boy who now calls himself Masta Unk, says it was nothing to see a gun in his school everyday. He’d already well since graduated when he told me this. You see, they just don’t tell that a gun is in the bookbag or locker. It simply becomes the norm and they keep quiet, maybe so they won’t be a target. We don’t live in that area anymore but I don’t see that where one lives really matters. There’s never been a shooting there, fortunately.
To conclude my backstory, I was in the Army National Guard for awhile. I was a sharp shooter. I liked that I could hit a target dead on. I used all manner of weapons in training. I was a soldier who could hold my own ’cause that’s all a part of what I had to learn. I’m not a soldier anymore. Neither are the children. School is not a battleground. It’s sad that we’ve come to where we are and I don’t know if or how we can ever go back.
What do you think?
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This post saddens me. When I was a kid, the worst thing I ever saw was 4 guys beating up another guy at a party. He walked away with a bloody nose. The idea that kids take guns to school horrifies me. The fact that kids have access to guns sickens me. My dad was a cop and my husband was a soldier. I’ve been around guns all my life. Guns belong in a safe if they are in people’s homes. That safe has to be secure too. I’m not afraid of guns if they are in the hands of responsible adults. I’m terrified of guns in the hands of children.
And we thought fist-fighting was bad. Students have so many other challenges outside of learning.
By the time I started junior high school, we had cops roaming the hallways from the Youth Aid division and, hell yeah, they were armed; we had (for our small state and city) a very bad gang problem and several race riots had broken out in the various schools. I can’t recall if any students ever got busted for having a gun in school but many got busted for carrying knives. brass knuckles, nunchucks, and straight razors.
Given the tragic shootings that have taken place in American schools, I’m not surprised if some students are saving up their allowance to get a Saturday night special, not because they’re in a gang but simply to protect themselves from anyone who wants to fuck with them.
Indeed, I was reading an article in the Richmond (VA) Times, where a bill passed to allow armed guards to patrol all of the schools, a move that a few other states are trying to adopt because something has to be done. I remember, also from back in the day, where some schools in the country raise eyebrows by installing metal detectors at all entrances as well as having cops who had the authority to shake anyone down they suspected of carrying a weapon that could have gotten past the metal detectors.
Unless something can be done to prevent the senseless violence we saw in CT, is there any wonder why kids are packing something other than lunch to go to school… and there’s a need to have armed security roaming the joint?
I also remember to big to-do when metal detectors were suggested. This was proposed for some of the worst of circumstances but it’s not predictable as to where detectors can be strategically placed.
I went to school out of my district, but for a different reason. It was the 60′s, we had busing and we actually had some choices. None of our school choices were bad, dangerous or unsafe. We chose based on programs; Sports, Arts, Scholastics. For me, well I was a ‘bad kid’ the courts wanted me out of one system but let me choose where to go, I bused to a system with an Arts Program – Drama and Dance.
We never saw violence. But activism, oh yes we saw plenty of that. I went to school in Seattle, WA even though my family was from Texas we fortunately didn’t spend most of our childhood here.
I don’t know where we go my friend. I don’t know what we do. This escalating violence, it is changing our world view and that of our next generation. This culture of violence, it is changing the souls of our children.
For the most part, there was a sense of fear that kept kids from going to far. That’s not so prevalent now. And then too, back then, parents had more control of their kids.
Guns were in some of the schools I went to, but luckily I never got shot. Though I did lose a friend to suicide by gun at 14. The violence I felt and saw was all with fists and knives. I felt violence firsthand that left me scarred and afraid for years, but I healed. When you get killed by a loon with a gun you never get a chance to heal. I don’t think it’s escalating or worse then years ago. We have more access to guns so yes, that is most likely to be the weapon of choice. What we need is to stop these foolish arguments and political showdowns and invest in prevention. High caliber automatic guns have no place in our homes. None of the gun owners I know own one of those. I think it’s ludicrous and the only people I hear supporting that BS is those who don’t live in communities where violence is expected daily.
We need more programs to teach non-violence and respect like these: Cure Violence in Chicago, http://cureviolence.org/doyourpeace/
The Men of Strength Clubs: http://www.mencanstoprape.org/The-Men-of-Strength-Club/
We need better mental health care and we need to teach tolerance, acceptance and non-violence as a REQUIRED class in school.
All are good suggestions. There does need to be stricter enforcement with who can have a gun and everyone in the household should be evaluated.
I hadn’t thought before of having everyone in the household evaluate, but that is a great point.
I think it’s the clearest indication yet that there is something very, very wrong with us that we’re not facing. And it won’t improve until we do.
Yes, clearly.
I grew up in an age and an area where the worst thing that could happen was that some one would proposition you when you didn’t want them to, or not proposition you when you wanted them to. Today’s shit is way too much for todays (or any day’s) students to have to deal with.
And so we damn well better deal with it.
Well done post, Totsy. Perfect touch.
Thanks. I’m so glad I’m not in school today.
Makes me sad that this is even a topic. I guess I am older thatn most, as there wasn’t too much of a threat when I was in school. Don’t know what happened. Wish I did, then maybe we would know what to do. Don’t have any idea for a solution. Mores the pity.
It is a pity and shame indeed.
I don’t even know where to start with this one, Totsy. Not sure when we got to this place. I feel such sadness, I wish we could go back to that time….
Me too.
Yah, Totsy, this is going to take some miraculous manoeuvring to get to a solution.
As a kid, in my home, guns were a means of putting food on the table – geese, moose, deer, etc. As an adult, however, in the (tiny bit of) martial arts I studied, I learned that any weapon I carry can be used against me.
Maybe we could put martial arts on school curricula – while kids become physically fit, in a realm of spiritual awareness they could gain a skill that builds self-esteem while providing self protection.
If kids are carrying any sort of weaponry, it must be hard for teachers go to work. My teacher-mom, made country kids drop their knives, sling shots, arrows and sharp instruments at the door. They could pick them up when they left the school – they were tools, not weapons. But she wanted them to see these things had their place which was NOT at school. The kids would not get them back if they were irresponsible in attitude or action.
I honestly believe that all of that “hardware” scared Mom, but she wouldn’t let the students see that. She hated having guns in the house – she made Dad build a gun closet that was always locked. Dad made a little .22 for me to use (we got $.05 per pair of crows feet because there was an overpopulation of crows and the crops were being decimated.) However, I never saw my mother touch a gun.
Your mom was a tough one. It takes courage to make kids give up their stuff and even more courage today. Imagine.
The solutions are complex but there is no doubting that it suits governments to keep people in fear ( and indeed as wage slaves ) as they are much easier to control..
Guns are VERY big business in America with every state having at least one armaments factory which means jobs so where is the incentive to reduce guns? there isn’t any. I don’t believe America’s 2nd Amendment would have been passed if your founding fathers could have foreseen where it was going to lead. It was a time of muskets and militia.. not AK47 and kids bringing guns to school.
I think each and every member of society has to play their part because it isn’t someone else’s problem it is a world problem.
I say be the change you want to see in the world.. Apathy is no longer an option..
Yep; the connection is linked worldwide. One problem ignites just as well as a solution.
Life was indeed simpler when you were a girl, and a lot more simple when I was a boy. Schools should be gun-free zones, the NRA notwithstanding.
The NRA believes schools should protect with guns. Sounds like war.
Things have changed radically and in many ways, although we kid ourselves, they have changed for the worst. When I was a kid, there was no such thing other than a brief scuffle in school and sometimes an occasional fist fight. There were bad things out in the streets, in poorer school districts, but they rarely made their way into our schools. That was back in the 80′s.
We were just kids and our environment allowed us some remnants of innocence. Not so anymore and it’s a sad and sobering thing to see. I think it’s God awful that people are proposing armed guards and metal detectors in schools instead of getting to the root of the problem. There are so many contributing factors to escalating violence and it’s just plain irresponsible not to look at them. Instead, we just seem willing to accept them as a fact of life which is wrong on so many levels.
A scuffle, food fight and that sort of thing has escalated to new levels. I’m glad I’m not in school anymore. And do you recall the fights in school bathrooms that were uploaded to YouTube? Everybody’s trying to get their 15 minutes.
EVERYBODY! Yes, I do lol. I knew things had changed irrevocably back in the 90′s. I was on a NY train, standing next to some teenage girls who were engrossed in a fight. One of them kept falling into me and 2x I pushed her away and moved away from them. Just as I moved away, one of the girls took out a razor and slashed the other girl’s face. I remember how I was shaking when I got off the train. At the violence and the fact that I’d come that close to get cutting by a child SMH. There was a time when children in public respected adults and didn’t act crazy at least in their presence. Or, so it was when I was a teen. Those days are long gone.
I wish we could do something.