TUESDAY TRAGEDY
🌷I was 12 when Columbine occurred. I still remember it. It felt terrifying and completely unbelievable but also attenuated – it was “so far” from my safe home. We never had school shooter drills or metal detectors. As decades passed, there were more and more shootings. I’ve heard of all the precautions schools take now – police, locked gates, lockdowns, drills. Regardless, every shooting that happened still seemed so far away.
And then one happened blocks from our house.
Some deranged monster decided to shoot into a church where he knew kids and teachers were attending Mass. The fucking asshole killed two kids, and then himself. People keeping talking about a motive, but let’s be honest, he knew what he was doing was asinine, horrendous, and atrocious, because he shot himself so he wouldn’t have to face the people whose lives he just destroyed. The children he traumatized. The parents that will never feel safe in a school or church again. Coward.
Being a mom, this incident hit me differently than all the other shootings. I can’t help but put myself in the shoes of those parents. I can’t help but think of little Evie. Daycare did a precautionary shooter drill after the incident. Phil and I kept thinking of Evelyn being brought to some back room, clapping, and blowing bubbles, with no idea what was going on. Is it selfish of me to say, I’m grateful Evie is not old enough to understand the events of August 27th? What’s even sadder to think is, if these past years have taught us anything, this will happen again, and at some point, Evie will be old enough to grasp a school shooting. And even if a shooting doesn’t happen, her childhood will always be one where there are precautions taken to keep her safe, and she will be aware of these. She’ll attend the shooting drills. She’ll walk through multiple levels of security to walk to her classroom. There will likely be a police officer always on her school grounds. It breaks my heart a bit, knowing that those things are necessary because there are monsters that shoot children. It’s like the world will take a piece of her innocence before she even understands that it shouldn’t be like this.🌷
