Way, way too close to home

You probably heard about the school shooting in Central Florida on Friday. Kid takes gun to middle school, brandishes it, school clears out, cops chase kid into bathroom, corner kid. Kid points gun at cop, cop shoots kid. Kid is on life support as of this writing.

If we hadn't made the decision two years ago this month to uproot our lives and change my career, The Wife and I would have been among the frantic parents in the mob scene outside the school Friday morning. That was the middle school the Old Daughter would have attended.

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This spurred a discussion in the house this evening. The Wife was mortified that the SWAT team shot this poor kid, who just had a little pellet gun. "They didn't have to shoot to kill," she said. "They had him cornered in the bathroom, for Pete's said. Why didn't they just shoot him in the leg or something?"

I pointed out that it was a pellet gun made to look just like a 9mm Beretta, and that the cop did exactly the right thing. "A kid takes a gun to my kid's school," I said, "I want him taken out. I want the cops to drop him. I don't care if he's 15." If a SWAT team had been able to get to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold a little sooner, maybe that's 12 other families who would have been spared the unspeakable grief they've dealt with the last six years.

I'm probably closer to wrong, and she's probably closer to right. A kid dying is a tragedy, and I hope this kid holds on and gets treatment and becomes a productive member of society. But dammit, my first priority is my children's safety.

My kid was safely in her own middle school Friday, 100 miles to the southwest of the horror, and knows nothing of this incident. But we've already had to explain more to her this year than we've wanted to. An eighth-grader at her school committed suicide earlier this year. It was not that long ago that we were having to teach her how to tie her shoes; now we're having to show her some of the world's darkest corners.

I know that's the only way that she's going to grow up with the ability to understand and deal with such things. But it's not right, and it's not something for which I'm prepared as a parent.

I graduated from high school in 1986, which wasn't exactly the Little House on the Prairie era. In the approximately 2,160 days in which I attended public schools, I never once thought for a second that somebody might get shot there. We lost fellow students to car wrecks, childhood diseases and tornadoes, but not suicide.

I try not to believe the world is a worse or crazier place now than it has ever been. Days like today test that belief.