Friday's Aftermath

Was at the boys' school twice this morning: once to drop off a project for Thing One and pick up a school board packet, and once later to help my mom find Thing Two's classroom so she could read to his class.

Now, we have always had good security measures in place at this school.  The school board had all the doors and locks replaced over this past summer, too.  I don't think anyone felt unsafe there until Friday. Probably someone with semiautomatic weapons and mayhem in his heart could shoot through the front doors of our school as well. At any rate, when I went in the first time today, there was a locksmith working by the main doors and a state trooper in the parking lot.

The faculty had a meeting before the school day started to decide how to talk to the kids.  The counselors will be available all day.  The principal cancelled a meeting we were supposed to have this morning because she needed to spend the time in classrooms talking to frightened children instead.  When I dropped off Thing One's project, there were two men I'd never seen before in his classroom (his teacher is small and female) and it really shook me.  I actually stood out in the hall for a while watching them do math games with the kids.  Crazy as it sounds, even though what they were doing was innocent, I was glad that the teacher came out to get the poster and that she looked okay.  The second time I went to school, while Mom was reading, I was looking around Thing Two's classroom wondering if there were enough hiding places for 19 kids in that room.  What a hell of a way to think and live.

Now, this is where I probably piss a bunch of people off, but it is what it is.  If you have a child with known mental health issues, you don't buy a bunch of goddamned guns, keep them around the house and teach him to shoot on top of it. You just fucking don't.  Yes, we need to have major national discussions about mental health.  We need to help these people, destigmatize their disease, find better meds with fewer side effects and make effective counseling available.  Totally, 110% on board with that.  But the sad reality is that some people just can't be independent and do whatever they want to do.  Civil rights my ass.  You get your civil rights right up until the point where you become a menace to society, and then somebody else needs to step in and save you from yourself and save all those innocent souls as well.

I looked a bunch of beautiful small children in the eyes this morning.  Any bastard mentally sick enough to aim at even one of them and pull a trigger has no goddamn business being on the loose.