11.10.2009

Today was a day that I thought that I would never see.

As many of you may know, I've said before about the sizes of the towns that I lived/live in. They're small and most of them have pretty much one stoplight, two if you're lucky. I went to high school in a small town and graduated as one of 108 students.

We lived in a neighboring small town, about the same size as the one that we live in now, although this one is so much more tight knit. The school district is better and it feels like more of an actual town rather than some place you're just passing through. We moved here not only to live in a bigger home, but to get the kids into a better school district in this great area that I'm from. I love this area, I could never live anywhere else.

To receive a phone call this morning that the middle school principal was being held hostage by a man with a rifle is heartbreaking. First for the fact that there are kids in the school. Obviously. Of all people and places to have impending harm, why must it be a school? At risk of sounding cold, dear Lord, not a school. No more guns and schools, if someone feels like they must do something of that extent, please, go anywhere but a school, go anywhere that there isn't children. Not saying I don't care about adults, but please, don't burn these images into the kids brains to scar them forever. This man, monster, what have you, took the middle school principal hostage to get out his statements of how the U.S. military is treated. Please tell me what that has to do with the middle/high school? Please tell me how you think this will help your cause? How this would help ANY cause...? Thankfully, no one was hurt, yet I do believe that kids were harmed simply by the fact that it happened. News reports always say "and no one was harmed" or "it was a peaceful ending" but how can you say that this instance didn't harm the people involved at all? How can you say that living with anything traumatic in your head is peaceful at all? My heart goes to the principal, my heart goes to the staff, my thanks go to the law enforcement that kept their cool and kept this under some control, my thoughts are with all of the kids.

My daughter is in kindergarten, granted, an entirely different building, less than a mile away, but still in school. In a school district that is amazing, high graduation rates, high college acceptance rates, great sports scouting opportunities, and as it stands now, my daughter will graduate as only one of a possible fourty eight students. The school bus came to pick her up this morning and I kept her home. I tossed her "perfect attendance" record out the window. I took extra time to hug her. I took an extra moment to actually listen to what she was saying to me instead of just agreeing when I felt a bit more busy than I should have been.