Current Events
Good News Bad News
HARVIND KAUR
Child: Hi, Mommy!
Mother: Hi Baby! How was your day at school?
Child: Well, Mommy, I have good news and bad news.
Mother: Okay, let’s start with the good news.
Child: Well, we played dragons and I got to be the dragon. But then Daniel roared really loud and he got a time out.
Mother: Who did he roar at?
Child: Me.
Mother: Did you roar back?
Child: Yeah, but he roared louder.
Mother: Okay, so what else happened?
Child: Well, guess what! Manuel was my boyfriend today.
Mother: Really?
Child: Yeah, but I had to kill him.
Mother: Why?
Child: Because that’s what dragons do. But it was just for the game, he’s still my friend.
Mother: Good, because we like our friends and we don’t hurt them or anyone. So what’s the bad news?
Child: Well, Mommy, there were really loud noises in my school today. Someone came in with this big gun and he blew my heart out of my chest. But he killed my teacher first. I was lucky, Mommy, I was one of the first ones so I didn’t have to see so much blood or hear all the screams. Mommy, you know I love you forever. But sorry, I won’t be coming home anymore. I have a big hole in my chest and so do all my friends. Is this how we were supposed to die?
Everyday my four (almost five) year old and I discuss our day.
Some days she’s the one who’ll ask me, “Mommy how was work today?” But she really waits for me to ask her. Everyday her answer starts with “I have good news and bad news.”
And we always talk about the good news first.
Where did all those conversations for twenty beautiful babes go on Friday, December 15, 2012?
I did not know any of the children, but they were still all part of my future. There could have been the next president, or the one who found the cure to Parkinson’s, or the next composer that changed music forever. There was someone there that might one day have met my daughter and changed her life in some way. After all, they are the same generation in an ever shrinking world. They are my children. It is because they are children that they belonged to all of us.
If we believe it takes a village to raise a child, on Friday, our nation failed 20 … and so many more.
I am deeply sad as most people are. However, my questions go beyond the issues of gun control and better care for the mentally ill. I want to ask this nation where is the civics we are supposed to cultivate in our schools, places of worship, and homes. I am not talking about tolerance. I am talking pure and simple civics; what it takes to be a member, a citizen, of a society.
I have seen in my own lifetime a major shift in how people view themselves in relation to the world around them. There is no real appreciation or understanding that ultimately we are a collective with individual responsibility to the society we live in. I appreciate my education which taught me to understand my own individuality and my own right to fulfill my goals and needs. But along with that, I also learned what it meant to be a good citizen.
My early grade school years were in Canada. There in Baycrest Public School, every year one student received an award for Academic Achievement and one received a Citizenship Award. I received the citizenship award several times. I still have the small maple leaf trophies. And I was always a bit jealous of my friend Silvia Valdman who always won the academic award.
Today, I more deeply appreciate what my school tried to instil in us at an early age.
So what is a citizenship award, you might ask?
Let’s think on this. It was for being compassionate to your fellow students; for being proud of your class and school; for being willing to step in to help in any way you could. It was for being happy for the person who was always picked as the lead for the school play even when you weren’t.
Do we still worry as a nation to honestly imbue these characteristics in ourselves and in our children?
When you look at our nation’s dialogue, it is very apparent that somewhere along the way these ideas became old fashioned or not necessary. America has elected its first African-American two-term President, and Barack Obama has had to deal with the disrespect of being called a liar while in Congress.
He has been talked about as being a foreigner because he couldn’t possibly be a citizen since his dad was from Kenya. He also has been accused of being Muslim; is that so horrible? Isn’t this country based on freedom of religion?
Why do people have the audacity to do these things – simple, because he’s black. Some of us still feel the right to that hatred of people we would rather oppress for varied reasons.
This past political season was also so fraught with the 1% vs. the other 99%. It has been an ‘us vs. them’ mentality. I deserve all the riches. I worked for all that money, I deserve to get a 30 million dollar salary because I am looking out for me. Who cares about the rest of you. You are not my problem. I do not see you because I am first. It is me that matters.
This “me” mentality allows us to disregard, sublimate and deny everyone around us. It allows us to hate freely and openly.
Yes, the individual does matter. However, how do you deny the collective? We are an increasingly smaller global village. It will require more individual responsibility to the whole if we are to innovate, create and ultimately survive.
I do believe we need Gun Control. Why is it ever necessary to have an automatic weapon that can discharge multiple rounds without having to reload? These assault weapons are meant for war.
Who is the enemy today? Your neighbor who accidently put his trash bin too close to your driveway?
Or are you pulling the machine gun out at the next guy who cuts you off on the street and then you’re going to indiscriminately shoot other cars because those drivers might do the same thing and you’re just plain angry?
Or do you walk into your job and decide they did you wrong, so you have the right to take your own revenge? Better yet, walk onto campus and kill as many co-eds as you can because you don’t understand why you are having such a hard time adjusting and making friends and your health insurance doesn’t let you see a therapist?
I have heard the commentary that this is about guns, this is about mental illness, and this is about those folks looking for infamy. I agree, but the deeper troubling question is what we are NOT teaching about being good citizens. We must teach how to live and cope in an ever increasingly diverse society and find ways to remain connected to each other as part of a large and blossoming humanity.
Schools alone cannot take the responsibility for teaching these lessons. Those in the public sphere must take this responsibility, those who are preaching faith must take this responsibility, and all of us must be aware of our actions in everyday life and we must realize this responsibility.
I don’t really care who the shooter was. I don’t care about what ailed him or motivated him.
I do know that in our nation, a line has been crossed. It is up to all of us to decide how we react and what we do to change the world we live in. Putting up more security fences, doing more school lockdowns will not create the change that is needed.
There are twenty babes whose names need to be put up in spotlights so we can remember our responsibility to be good citizens and take care of all of our members - from the youngest, to the oldest, to the frailest.
I have shed many tears for all of these children. I believe many people have shed tears and felt the pain of losing them. It doesn’t matter if they are not our own flesh and blood. They are children in our midst, in our society; they are a part of our fabric of American life.
We will never enjoy their potential because we could not save them for their place in the world.
1 Charlotte Bacon, 6
2 Daniel Barden, 7
3 Olivia Engel, 6
4 Josephine Gay, 7
5 Ana Marquez-Greene, 6
6 Dylan Hockley, 6
7 Madeleine Hsu, 6
8 Catherine Hubbard, 6
9 Chase Kowalski, 7
10 Jesse Lewis, 6
11 James Mattioli, 6
12 Grace McDonnell, 7
13 Emilie Parker, 6
14 Jack Pinto, 6
15 Noah Pozner, 6
16 Caroline Previdi, 6
17 Jessica Rekos, 6
18 Avielle Richman, 6
19 Benjamin Wheeler, 6
20 Allison Wyatt, 6
The author is mother of two daughters, ages 8 and 5.
December 16, 2012