Another boy that my daughter knew in high school has died -- this time, they (the kids; the administration's not talking) think it's a suicide. Once again, my daughter wants to come home for the funeral. Fortunately, the timing works out so that she can leave immediately after her last class tomorrow, and be back on Sunday. Unfortunately, that means that someone gets to make a quick round-trip to Blacksburg today. I'm mulling over running a tab and presenting it to her when she graduates. For sure, in my next life, my children are going to a school that's either relatively close, or too far to travel spontaneously. On Sunday, it'll be down and up in one day, but my wife will be with me to share the driving.
The other night my daughter mentioned to her mother some things she had learned in one of her classes. As part of that, she said that she didn't really think she was so much shaped by us as by her peers. I was ever so delighted to hear that. My wife did say that later she recanted on that, a little bit. Still....
This is the third kid who has died that she knew - the first was a kid who lives down the block; he appeared to have been playing with a gun at a neighbor's house, and it was loaded. My wife told a coworker that she's amazed that our daughter knows so many, and the coworker said that since elementary school, her daughter has known seven kids who have died.
3 comments:
Ever single friend I had in elementary and middle school died violently.
EVERY SINGLE ONE.
Hunting accidents (0), drunk driving(1), careless driving and showing off (3), one dropped through the ice on his snow machine, and 3 froze while drunkenly tailgating. one fell asleep on the road outside of town, and was hit several times.
But that was just elementary school. High school, I just decided not to have friends...apparently having me as a buddy was a fatal attraction. We lost one in a hundred I think due to addictions, alcohol abuse and botched abortions. (what, you think we didn't KNOW!)
In my platoon in basic training, one committed suicide, another had a heart attack on the file miler, and one drowned. A couple went crazy...the fellow on the bottom bunk of the suicide, and another when his sweetheart of ten years dumped him in favor of #ten platoon. (I don't blame him actually, they were our hated rivals!) Not too bad for a platoon which started out with 130 soldiers.
I feel pretty strongly about motor cars.... guns don't kill people...stupid people driving cars kill people....
drunken stupid people driving etc. etc.
If guns don't kill people, why do soldiers have guns?
And yeah, clearly, you are Patient Zero when it comes to deaths in school.
I dunno...I carried a gun for twenty years, and only once did I let a shot off. I "think" it missed. But crikey...that old car of mine! The number of close calls! Ever see how many good folks are killed by Detroit as opposed to Hartford?
Nader called it "unsafe at any speed", and he was right. Things are better, but seriously, more good God fearing Americans die every week behind the wheels of motor cars than die in a year from a bullet!
Detroit execs WANT y'all to watch the birdie of gun ownership while they ram it up your automobile when you ain't a lookin!
Oh well, two wrongs don't make a right. But have you forgotten the lessons learned by prohibition back in the '30s? Hell no, I wasn't there either, but as soon as you prohibit something, you make it more attractive. When I went to sell my guns a few years ago, I kind of accidently on purpose give the impression that they might have been, well, stolen. Got three times the going rate for 'em!
(though the real stupid was me for getting rid of my guns in order pay for something much more lethal...a car!)
If you are going to bet on the fundamental decency of human beings versus their being stupid, well, I'll take that bet. Regulation will work better than prohibition. I'm totally in favor of that!
And yeah...it scarred my high school years for sure! Amazing I ever got a girl friend! I nearly left town when she got the flu!!!!
When she recovered, I was fairly certain the jinx was over.
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