MountainMornings

“The big issue is the access to the weapon itself,” a CNN anchor said about the recent Oxford school shooting. It’s been over 20 years of school massacres, and our legislators haven’t figured it out yet? IT”S THE GUNS – and also parents who buy guns for their 15 year old boy.

I feel like I’ve been living in a war zone. Random gunfire sometimes at night, random explosions from demolition down the block that shake the house, and right across the street a crew is stripping the facade off an apartment building with a water problem. Generators buzz in my ear all day, punctuated by large objects dropping into the dumpster outside my living room window.

Add in Covid, and it’s non-stop stress living in the city. Our quiet, cozy cottage won’t be ready until sometime in March, so we just grin and bear it.

But hearing about another Parkland, another Sandy Hook, another Columbine tested my reserve. As an ex-school board member, I finally heard someone explain what happened on the day his parents refused to take their little shooter home. The day he murdered four students. Their child had been drawing violent, bloody images and searching online for ammo, so he was sent to the school’s guidance office!

The Oxford Supervisor, a guy probably making 6 figures, said that there had been NO disciplinary actions involving the shooter, so he never spent a day in detention. So what? Let’s face it, kids draw crazy stuff, but if teachers reported this boy it had to be pretty bad. I trust teachers. Of course, the school wants to avoid liability now, but why didn’t they alert administration then? If a Principal had been called, and not a Counselor, he would have had his bag and locker searched, and then the police would arrive and confiscate the gun.

His parents would have helped him check into the local juvenile facility – and four students would be alive today. Their parents shopping for Christmas presents instead of coffins.

If staying awake, worrying about kids and guns wasn’t enough, last night we had two weather fronts come through Nashville – we were trumpeted to bed with thunder, and the lightening was blinding. Bob got on his iPad and checked the radar, “Oh, this will be over in 10 minutes,” he said. Mind you, he knew I had a dream the night before about a tornado, but so far we were only under a tornado “watch.” Which means the wind and temperature conditions are ready and waiting to start spinning a vortex around you, so activate that amygdala! WATCH OUT.

We are currently puppy sitting the Bride’s Frenchie who looks like Winston Churchill, so let’s call him “W” or “Dub-ya.” He is one brave and chill pooch, who didn’t understand why Ms Bean was pacing and whining. Luckily, W’s snoring eased us into sleep, but when Bean started rambling again around 4 am, combined with wind and thunder, my post-tornado-stress kicked into hard drive?

I quickly went to my safe space.

Nope, I wish. We don’t have a safe space in this city farmhouse flanked by an apartment construction zone with flapping tarps and yellow crime tape strung like party lights.

What I DID do at 4:03 am was gather the pups and head downstairs for some coffee and local TV, and lo and behold, our tornado watch had turned into a “Tornado Warning!” But before you start worrying, don’t cry for me since I’m here to tell the tale. This second storm was moving fast, about 55 MPH, and the warning didn’t include our county. Two adjacent counties had debris flying around, so the cute weather girl in a tight-fitting dress told us to stay vigilant. Because a “warning,” unlike a watch, means they’ve spotted a tornado!

I wish we could calibrate the likelihood of a mass shooting as well as we follow storms to predict tornadoes. If you’re worried about a student searching for ammo, you watch him. And if he starts drawing bloody, violent images, you warn the right people. Better yet, don’t buy metal detectors for our schools and ask our teachers to carry weapons. Pass real gun control legislation. Enough is enough.