Please Join Me in Being Furious at the World (Just for Today)
...or maybe a bit longer
As I have previously written, my children experienced two bomb threats at school last week. If you would like a further introduction to what we now willingly accept in America, here is what transpired at school today:
A substitute, now doubt well-meaning, was in class where a student apparently had a seizure or similar incident. There is a certain procedure for this, but the substitute instead accidentally enacted the protocol that indicates there is an active school shooter. This lead to students barricading doors, crawling our of windows, panicking, and running across the lawn and road to the nearby middle school. Everyone was terrified, including my chidren (of course), who were obviously crying at school and were shaken when telling me the story upon arriving home.
The point here isn’t that someone who isn’t a regular employee made a mistake (I imagine they feel beyond deeply sorry). The point is that we, as a country, allow this to happen and are uniquely unresponsive to serious problems in general—we only prepare for the after but leave the before unattended.
I apologized to my children, but for what, I’m not sure. Maybe, “I’m sorry this is the world we have made for you. I’m sorry how much practice you have to put into not dying. I will continue to do my best to steer our small tribe toward hope.”
Well, now that I have that off my chest, I hope you are all having a better day.