It shouldn't have bothered me

I subbed yesterday. It was the first time since the school shootings occurred last week. I thought that it wouldn't effect me. I am just a sub in a school hundreds of miles away from where the incident occurred.  I told myself that letting it effect me was just giving into the drama that the media and politicians, with their talk of gun control and problems with psychiatric care, want to create.

My kids had already came home talking about the drills they had at school and Bella complained about not being allowed to go to the water fountain and bathroom by herself anymore - they are only allowed to go as a class now.  I saw a local police officer who had come to talk to the kids coming out of the school, as I went in to pick my kids up early.  I thought I was prepared to sub again.

I arrived at my post to sub for the librarian. I thought how prepping for this day felt like any other, except there was this electric in the air, like everyone was on high alert. I thought it was just me, but then the librarian put the keys to the building into my hand, the ones normally kept in her desk drawer when I was there, and said, "Keep these in your pocket at all times, just in case you need them." I am sure she meant because of the fact that they have stopped letting people in the locked doors. Subs don't normally have keys to the buildings, so we normally rely on another teacher to let us in or go around to the front door, if we have to leave the building during the school day. But before I could stop it, a vision of me herding kids into the storage room at the front of the library and locking them in against who-knows-what came flashing into my mind and made me sick to my stomach.

As my first class came piling into the room, I thought about what it would feel like to go from trying to get them to stop talking and sit in their seats to trying to save their lives in less than a minute, while realizing that I may never see my own kids or husband again either. I looked into their faces and wondered how anyone could look into the faces of elementary school kids and take their lives from them. It had to be pure evilness. It had to be.


I thought about the kids who may have had a fight with one of the students who will never return to school again. How do you explain that it is okay to a child? Those kids have had their innocence shattered and the community stands stunned, everyone broken by it, few if any are untouched. With 28 dead in a small town, there are few that would not have been related or been friends or acquaintances with at least one of the victims or their family.

I thought about how a person starts getting troubled enough to do what that 20 year old did and what his extended family must be dealing with. The families of the victims get sympathy. The families of the accused gets hatred. Yet, we all know that there are members of his own family who wonder how things could have went so wrong, while mourning the lose of his mother, who will be forever held in scrutiny regarding how she handled this boy who became a monster on a seemingly normal December morning. I wonder how many of them think, "I saw something like this coming, but never this bad. If only I had done... or if only she had done...."

I didn't think that it should have effected me, but it did. I didn't want to have all these thoughts rush at me on my own normal December morning, but I just couldn't help it.

God help those who are left behind in this tiny town in Connecticut, who have to try to find a new normal as media scour their town and question their citizens. As politicians and sensationalists try to take advantage of the situation to further their own agendas.

God help us all to remember that life is like a mist and God still loves the world.