A Grim Post

I think this is the creepiest time of the year. It's April Scary-Times.

(Maybe I should think of a more ominous-sounding name.)

Bad things happen around this mid- to late-ish part of April, in large part due to conscious copycatting. For examples:

April 19th, 1993: Branch Dividian fire
April 19th, 1995: Oklahoma City bombing
April 20th, 1999: Columbine massacre
April 16th, last year: the Virginia Tech massacre
April 18th, last year: that crazy ex-employee busting into NASA in Houston and killing a guy

Now, I know this probably isn't actually statistically significant, out of all the horrible things that go on in the world every day; this is just something that makes me personally nervous. It's just that those first things established a pattern in my young mind, and those last two brought it all back.

(A side note about the impact of Columbine on my generation: today in my random undergrad class, the professor brought up Columbine and asked us if we remembered that. I hope he didn't see me when I involuntarily looked at him like he was an idiot [my too-honest facial expressions have and will continue to get me in trouble, I know]. I know that I'm a few years older than most of the people in there, but A) there was wall-to-wall media coverage on that B)big events often, in my opinion, have an even greater impact on the young because they're just not as used to Everything; events that happen during your formative years etch themselves into you, especially in the case of C) those kids were my age. That wasn't just a big huge deal that happened, it was a big huge deal that happened to people exactly like me. And for those undergrads, to people practically exactly like them. Proof of my thesis: the prof was trying to remember the nickname the kids who perpetrated the shooting had. "What were they called?" he said, half-musing to himself. "The Trenchcoat Mafia," the entire class chorused. Yeah, sir, we remember Columbine.)

I hope this post doesn't sound like I'm trying to make the Virginia Tech and Columbine shootings all about me--I'm not. What I'm saying is, you guys be careful out there, during April Scary-Times. And remember to think about those poor kids whose lives were snuffed out by people too distorted even to turn the guns on themselves first.

The worst thing about the events that have made April Scary-Times scary is that, in that moment, if you were there, what could you really do? Because in most cases, the answer is nothing. Maybe all we can really do is add our own little ounces of prevention by showing kindness to people. Come to think of it, if everybody did that, that would solve . . . everything.