That's it. I'm moving to Mauritania.
I have other, non-funny thoughts running around my head right now. How can I not? I mean, I looked at going to Virginia Tech for grad school. Besides, everyone who has been to college, particularly college in a college town, remembers what it was like. Remembers feeling like the campus was its own little island. Things on the island might hurt you. You might get sick from drinking or date raped by another student. But nothing like this. The worst things that should happen to you in the classroom are boredom and doing badly on a test or essay.
This all has made me think about some things. 1. The press. For the love of all that is good, leave these poor students alone. I see them on the Today Show, and all of them that I've seen who were actually on campus have this dazed, shocked look about them. The various hosts try to get them to talk about their experiences, their dead friends, their feelings about returning to class and how they're going to recover from this. And I want to scream with frustration. I understand that everyone wants information and wants to understand what is going on and how this could happen. But these kids don't need this from us. They had a girl on today who was a freshman at Columbine when that happened, one of the people in the cafeteria who luckily managed to escape. (This poor, poor girl) And that is what she said. She said that everyone needs to be able to get together, to support each other, to work through what they are going through. Without the press. Without having people ask them for interviews, without having lots of questions asked. And the whole naming the one student as the "hero" of the whole thing. Listen, I think what he did was great. God only knows what I would do in the same situation. But first of all, he was acting to save his own life. Yes, he saved lots of other lives by doing so. And what does that say about all the other people? I mean, there were other people who acted calmly and figured out how to protect themselves and others. What about the guy who blocked the door with his foot, and then, later, ran around doing first aide on the people whom he could help? I'm sure there are others. And what does calling this one guy a hero mean for all the other people, the people who didn't act as quickly?
2. What a strange world the millenials have grown up in. I mentioned Columbine, now this, September 11. I wonder if any of us can really feel safe anywhere. Not that we all think something is going to happen all the time. But I know I personally am not surprised when it does. Shocked, yes, saddened, yes. But surprised? I feel as though I am constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. For someone to attack the metro, for a plane to crash with me on it. For the earth to flood or a hurricane to blow away California. There are places that I think should be safe. But when I hear proof that they aren't, a part of me just sighs. I think I'll be more surprised if I die without anything tragic happening to me, like of old age or something.
2 comments:
I don't think I agree with you 100%. Was listening to NPR this morning and they interviewed the girl who "lived to tell" (the only one to get out of the German classroom alive) and also one of the colleagues of the German professor who was killed, and both were pretty moving. If interviews like that can touch people outside of the VTech community and make what happened more real for them, are they really such a bad thing? (might it even make listeners more in favor of efforts to prevent this from happening again?)
My whole thing is not that these interviews aren't horribly moving. My problem is more that I think these students need to concentrate first and foremost on their own mental health, not ours. I mean, it would be one thing if someone contacted the press about wanting to be interviewed, if they really wanted to talk about all of this. Which, I think, is what happened with the colleagues. It's more that I think the press is hounding these people, and I don't think that's right.
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