What a difference a day makes

 

A view of my daughter's school from my SUV as I pull out of my parking space. Please excuse the poor quality of the picture but I had no intention of taking a picture until I was pulling out of the parking space and turned to my left. When I turned to my left, I saw a different place. The building in front of me no longer just means education, friendship, team building, growth, safety and hope. No, it also means other things also. Fear and innocence lost are some of the first things that come to my mind when I think about what happened last Friday.

To me, this view of the school speaks volumes. The flags are at half mast because of the tragedy in Sandy Hook. There is a Sheriff's car parked in a designated parking slot for the Sheriff. There are two of them assigned each day at the school. Their role: to maintain peace on the school grounds. That use to only mean breaking up fights between students, following up on theft within the school and drug use. But something new has been added to their job description: to keep the children safe from any evil entering the school with guns and killing without care.

It has happened before... Columbine comes to mind. But this time they had gone too far. They had taken the lives of our littlest ones. They did it with malice and we still don't know why. And this time, it changed the world.

My daughter went to school yesterday with apprehension. My junior went to school with fear in the back of her mind that she may be shot or see one of her friends shot. Let me repeat that... My junior went to school with fear in the back of her mind that she may be shot or see one of her friends shot. And on that Monday as they sat in History class, they heard yelling in a nearby classroom. They listened intently for laughter or some sign that it was just kids rough housing while their teacher goes down the hallway. When they couldn't make that distinction, her teacher, in a very serious tone, told them to return to their seats and wait for further instruction and then he left the room. He was back in just a few moments and unlike any other time that he leaves the room, he came back to a quiet classroom of 16 and 17 year olds who looked at him for direction. He shook his head and said, "It is too soon, we can't take this so soon."

The yelling was just a group of kids in another classroom and they were goofing off. But as my daughter's classroom heard her teacher say that everything was fine, one girl said, "No joke but I was scared." And that gave everyone else in the class permission to admit to their own fear and uneasiness. My daughter and her classmates are only 16 and 17.

You pray your children will never fear for their lives. You expect broken hearts from teenage love, arguments between friends or a clash with a teacher. But you don't expect your child to sit in a classroom and worry about whether or not they will come home. You and your kids didn't sign up for this and yet here we are. And we are not alone. I spoke to my sister-n-law, in Canada, on the phone today. She said her young stepdaughter was nervous about going to school on Monday. When that young man went in to that school and did what he did. He didn't just take the lives of those 26 and the innocence of those children at Sandy Hook. No, he took the innocence and the sense of safety of children throughout the world as they went to school on Monday.

What a difference a day makes.... Pin It