This school shooting that happened on February 27 is exactly what this blog, what my book, "The Train Runs No More", refers to. It refers to children that are so disturbed by something in their life that they strike out with the only thing that comes to mind first without thinking about the consequences. Some of these children don't have a real positively influential parental figure in their life to start with. They can only observe what others have, what others do, and wish that they had that in their life. These kinds of children are nice up front. They are nice to talk to, some are polite, but rarely do they speak intimately of their life "away" from the everyday norm. The only parental figures in this poor kid's life committed spousal abuse against each other. The mother reportedly is a drug addict. The father, if he wasn't beating up the mother, he was assaulting another woman or a police officer. He had no close example to follow. He had been deemed a loner by news reports. Most likely he was a loner because he was embarrassed by the home life that he had. In his humiliation he didn't want to express such disappointment to his classmates. Who wants to hear about such negativity? He failed to find one true trustworthy person whom he could call a friend. He lived with his grandparents because he didn't have any place else to go. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, his grandparents probably did the best they knew how about raising a child again. At the same time, T J Lane, the kid, had to go to school with classmates that were living with their parents, not people that were much older practicing parenting. Maybe TJ was bothered by this. He was "different" from other students. Having no outlet about the goings on in his life, he expressed his thoughts by writing them down, but he probably didn't re-read them with an unbiased opinion to see what he could have done better or handled the situation better. Instead of confiding in one tangible person, he confided in a vast number of intangible people from Facebook. There is no closeness there. There is no intimacy there. There are no emotional responses from people that "see" from a different perspective there.
Some children fall victim to playing morbid video games where they shoot, maim, and kill people. These games are played so often by children that some fail to find the difference between fiction and reality. I am not blaming the video game producers. I play them myself. I enjoy them to no end, but there is a limit to everything. When these children are placed in real situations, it becomes hard for them to decipher which is real. To compound the issue, a high percentage of homes in America have to have a handgun for protection. Usually this handgun is kept within quick reach and kept loaded. The people serious about protection keep their handgun locked up somewhere so that when a situation does occur and usually at night, they have to leap from their bed, go unlock the safe, load the weapon, and by the time they have done that, they have been found by the perpetrator and assaulted or killed. Others just reach in the night stand by their bed, grab the gun and shoot from where they lay, or go find the perp, and when they see something move in the dark they shoot. More likely they have shot at the wrong person and as luck would have it, they killed the person they were shooting at and it was probably the wife whom heard a noise long before you even woke up and decided to investigate herself. Getting back to the poor, "disturbed" kid, this is where the gun was ascertained from and then taken to school.
One thing I have never been able to understand is the satisfaction of physically harming others. What satisfaction is gained from that kind of action? That kind of satisfaction is like taking drugs. It feels good only for the moment, but when the moment is over, you have to do it again. It doesn't last. What is gained by taking another innocent victim's life whom had no interaction in the "role" that these kids play? In my own life and experiences I have been backed into corners with no way out at times, but I have never resorted to taking the life of others. Maybe my own, but never others. Only at that last moment did realization take over, and yes, even "the hand of God" reached out and showed me that my life was more precious than I realized. For not being a "christian" or practicing Christianity, this was an astounding moment in my life. I have always thought about others before myself. I have always helped others before I helped myself. I always care for and about others before myself. It was at that moment that God reached out and asked me just to think about myself for just one moment and visualize what I was doing. I stopped in midstream of trying to take my life and I have been the happier for it. Although I still do not practice Christianity, nor do I even wish to promote it or any other religion, I do not take my life for granted nor anyone else's. Each life is precious, no matter how small a role in this vast, disappointing world that we live in. I do not take it for granted. To the dismay of others whom do not feel that or try as they might to keep me from having any importance in life, my retribution is that I have continued to live on where other classmates have passed away earlier in life from one of life's diseases. That is my Karma. That is their Karma and all it requires is just a little time and patience. For these kids, we must chip away at the ice that contains all that emotion. We must defuse the bomb that is ticking away inside. Become these kid's confidant. Help them. Invite them into our lives sometime. Throw water on the fire that is burning inside them and help them discover "things" from another perspective. As the old saying goes, "Two heads are better than one".
Now, more lives were taken than has been realized. Not only the injured students, the ones that have been killed, but also the innocent by standers, the witnesses, the survivors, the parents of the attending students, even TJ Lane himself. He may have been a "good" kid as described by one of his classmates, but now, he will be warehoused as "damaged goods" for the rest of his life. A kid with good grades in school that will never be able to amount to more than a hill of beans outside the joint. He will never see the outside again. So, rather than striking at the desired subject that he wanted to strike at, he misfired and caused more damage than can be realized. If people could only write down their emotions, put them down and come back and read them again when they reach a better frame of mind. Or, at least let a trustworthy friend that can be confided in and allow them to read them. If that could only be done, there is so much "pressure" that could be released, that one cannot realize the relief that can be gained.
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