When I was teaching at Triton College, one morning a student came in wearing a red Northern Illinois University sweatshirt and dark glasses. The day before a gunman opened fire in a lecture hall, killing five and then shooting himself. I said “are you in camaraderie?” She said “I lost two friends yesterday.” She was shaking. I took her into the hallway and she collapsed in my arms, sobbing in sheer agony. Holding onto a 19-year-old who’s friends were murdered is something I’ll never forget--and hope I never have to do again. I don’t know what happened to her all these years later, but I always think of her with each recurring one of these things. I was close to finishing my book on the Bath School bombing at the time. This young woman showed me the face of 1927 Bath. I told her that she now had a duty, just as the survivors of the Bath killing. Remember and bear witness. Tell the stories of her murdered friends. I seem to be rambling here, but writing about mass murder always reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut’s ending of Slaughterhouse-5: Poo-tee-weet.
I left teaching long before the commencement of school shootings. Now I watch in horror and dismay lines of school children linked hand-in-hand as they are escorted from a crime scene, people who had only gone out to buy a loaf of bread at a local supermarket standing frightened and/or mourning , movie-goers cowering at mall entrances wondering if the next time they go to see a film, it will be their last. They do not know. They do not understand. They try. But many cannot any longer.
When I was teaching at Triton College, one morning a student came in wearing a red Northern Illinois University sweatshirt and dark glasses. The day before a gunman opened fire in a lecture hall, killing five and then shooting himself. I said “are you in camaraderie?” She said “I lost two friends yesterday.” She was shaking. I took her into the hallway and she collapsed in my arms, sobbing in sheer agony. Holding onto a 19-year-old who’s friends were murdered is something I’ll never forget--and hope I never have to do again. I don’t know what happened to her all these years later, but I always think of her with each recurring one of these things. I was close to finishing my book on the Bath School bombing at the time. This young woman showed me the face of 1927 Bath. I told her that she now had a duty, just as the survivors of the Bath killing. Remember and bear witness. Tell the stories of her murdered friends. I seem to be rambling here, but writing about mass murder always reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut’s ending of Slaughterhouse-5: Poo-tee-weet.
Wow, what a story.
I'm glad I'm not teaching at MSU anymore--it would be too stressful worrying about the students more than ever before, and about my own safety too.
I left teaching long before the commencement of school shootings. Now I watch in horror and dismay lines of school children linked hand-in-hand as they are escorted from a crime scene, people who had only gone out to buy a loaf of bread at a local supermarket standing frightened and/or mourning , movie-goers cowering at mall entrances wondering if the next time they go to see a film, it will be their last. They do not know. They do not understand. They try. But many cannot any longer.
Remember people being killed by snipers in Sarajevo? That seemed so alien, and look at us now.....
Thanks. It's hard to live with the feeling that no place is safe. But that's where we are.