It's All Relative

How is this happening??

I can't even believe what is going on in this world. There was another school shooting this morning, this time in a little Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania. You can read about it HERE.

This was been the third school shooting in the last seven days. Last week, there was one in Colorado, near Columbine, where a man took 6 girls hostage, molested them and killed one before he turned his gun on himself. I don't know why these stories have affected me so much but they have. Maybe it's because it wasn't that long ago that I was in high school, I don't know. I can't believe how something so horrible can happen in this country. How can we be so preoccupied with the condition of other countries that we are allowing lunatics to wander onto high school campuses and shoot our kids? This doesn't make sense to me. People talk about terrorism but they never talk about like this. When a parent sends their child to school and can't help but feel afraid for their safety, how is that not terrorism? I am not a mother but it's teriffying to think about one day bringing a child into a world like this. Something has to change.

I remember in high school, right after the Columbine shootings, I was a sophomore and there was so much paranoia circulating my school. Everyday there was another rumor of someone getting caught with a gun in their locker or a teacher finding a threatening note in her class. It was chaos. It got worse when one morning, the fire alarm went off and our teachers were instructed to take us out onto the football field. No one really knew what was going on, but our shaken minds were immediately filled with potential scenarios of guns and violence. After an hour on the field, with questions still unanswered, I went over to Mr. Schwerdt, my student council advisor (and good friend to this day). If anyone knew what was going on, he would. After his inital reluctance to tell me, I finally got it out of him that there had been a bomb threat and that the police were checking the school for explosives. I remember feeling sad that day, if anything. I was sad for my school, sad that instead of being excited for the next football game or dance, we were talking about bombs in our classrooms. Instead of laughing with my friends at lunch, we were sitting together on the football field, while police raided our school. We stayed on the field for 4 hours before being let back inside. Nothing had been found and the police declared the threat a hoax. But I remember how that felt. The fear, panic. It isn't right. I pray that one day this country will figure out it's priorities so kids aren't more concerned with someone walking into their classroom with a gun than with what they got on a calculus test.