Ever since middle school— since 6th grade, when Sandy Hook happened, I would walk into a classroom and (if the teacher let us pick our seats) sit in the seat that I deemed least accessible to a shooter who might enter the classroom. I’d watch people open the door and walk in, calculating how someone might enter and start shooting. The window seats, ones near a closet, or those in the back corner where the door would shield from the hypothetical shooter’s view. I have a very robust imagination, but recently I’ve been talking with friends about it, as these shootings become more and more prevalent, and I found that my immature planning was a general thing that kids did.
At first, it was a funny and relatable thing we all did— like “Oh my god, you too? I thought I was just being silly. Do you go with the back corner or the window seats?” But then I thought about it a bit more in depth, and realized that holy shit, people are literally growing up in a world where the threat of a school shooting is so warranted that we just HAVE plans for it happening, individually. My sister was in early elementary school when this “mass shooting epidemic” sort of started, and I can’t even imagine how much more normal it is for her, and we are only 4 years apart.
When I logged into twitter, expecting another Kpop or Olympic Games tag, and saw #guncontrol trending, Parkland trending. I didn’t think “Oh no, something bad must’ve happened.” I thought. “Oh, look, another mass shooting. I THOUGHT it was too quiet lately.”
And I’m not going to go on a gun control tirade, because people will either have the same views on the subject, or refuse to change their mind.
I just want people to realize that my generation— the internet generation, the tidepod generation, the NEXT generation is growing up in a world where we expect our schools to be shot up. Where people point fingers, and ignore lost lives just to keep their pride intact. And the saddest part is, we, the students getting our bodies riddled with lead and living in fear that our school is next, can’t do anything about it. We can’t vote, we can’t skip school for protests with the fear that our grades will suffer. But adults can.
Don’t let the first thing your child thinks about, when walking into class the first day of school, be their goddamn in-case-of-shooter plan instead of the part of the syllabus that says homework will be collected randomly.
If you can, if you have the power that we don’t, SPEAK UP PLEASE. I don’t want to become jaded to death. I don’t want to live my life thinking that getting my school shot up is just another step in growing up. Congress won’t do it, only we, the people can.