I Am So Popular: Don't Shoot, Shoot, Shoot That Thing At Me
Editor’s note: The views expressed in I Am So Popular are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the outlook or beliefs of anyone else in the IST network.
My darling son called me a week or so ago in the middle of the day. Some of you might recall that Henry sometimes (like about 54 times in a row one semester) has a hard time getting up at the crack of 9 a.m. to get to chemistry class and, as a result, he’s been afforded a priceless learning opportunity to find out, firsthand, what it’s like to go to court for truancy. The judge, in addition to basically telling my son that he’s stupid, informed him he better have a pristine attendance record when we show up for our next date, in June.
Hence my son’s call. He wanted to let me know that he’d left school in the middle of the day. His excuse? He found a bullet in the hallway. You know, live ammunition. He turned the bullet in to the school cop and principal and voiced his concerns about safety. Then he split. He wanted to let me know that he was worried his absence would be counted as unexcused, getting him in trouble in court.
Call me a screaming liberal and Charlton Heston hater, but, you know, I could really get behind this vacate-the-premises-in-the-face-of-otherwise-maybe-getting-shot-to-death.
I put a call in to Michael Garrison, principal of McCallum, and left a message saying I had some concerns. Then I contacted my editors at this fine virtual publication and asked if finding a bullet in school was news or if I was being an alarmist.
Here I should point out that I am the resident old lady on the staff, old enough to be the mother of at least half of my Austinist colleagues, probably more like 90% of them. So we have different perspectives on shit, to put it mildly. Remembering my own days of high school when student violence fell more along the lines of snapped bra straps and “flat tires” given by stepping on the back of a classmate’s sneakers, I was surprised when not one but two of my young editors informed me that finding a bullet was no big deal. They reported that guns were practically de rigueur in their high schools. Hence my son’s experience did not make it into the Breaking News department.
Garrison called me back the next day and I told him I expected my son’s absence from his afternoon classes to be excused. Garrison said he wasn’t going to excuse the absence. While I know that, technically, guns don’t kill people, assholes wielding guns do, you don’t have to be Chekov to wonder if a bullet found in fourth period might show up again—perhaps in the head of a student—by sixth period.
I asked Garrison what protocol was in these situations. Surely AISD has some policy in place to handle these things. He told me that it’s up to him and the school cops to assess the situation and determine if there is an “immediate threat.” In this case, he said there was none. How did he determine this? Hmm, maybe he took intuition classes like I did and used psychic powers to make the call! In any case, he didn’t bother to inform the parents that a bullet had been found, which I think is the least he could’ve done.
I told him if I were in his shoes, I’d lock down the place and start searching backpacks. He did not see the wisdom in this concept. Maybe he was worried that this would cut into the school day and waste precious time?
Fast forward to yesterday, April 9th. Again, my son calls me, this time to tell me that he has a letter for me from the principal. The letter starts out like this:
Dear McCallum Parents:
We had an incident this afternoon at McCallum of which I would like to fully inform you. AISD Police confiscated a gun [emphasis mine] that had been brought to school by a student.
The letter went on to say:
Always know that the safety of McCallum students and staff is of paramount importance.
And yet he still did not lockdown the school. He then went on to encourage us parents to talk with your child about the importance of telling us about any action they may witness that threatens campus security. Working together, our staff, students and parents can keep our school safe.
This surprised me, since I’d already talked about these things with my child, who, upon reporting a bullet to the principal, got the message that it was no big deal.
So let’s see, what’s a solution here? Do I start a movement to get metal detectors installed? Do I start homeschooling my child? Do I turn a blind eye to all this? Am I a fucking alarmist?
I won’t be surprised if, upon reading this (which I hope he will), Garrison will dismiss me as a nutcase. It wouldn’t be the first time a school administrator passed such judgment on me. Because I’m one of those headache-inducing parents, the sort who, if I think bullshit is going down, says something about it.
For example, years ago, when the Texas Lege passed a bill mandating that kids pledge allegiance to both the US and Texas flags, I balked. I hated this mandate for numerous reasons. First of all, there are a lot of foreign kids in our schools. Isn’t it creepy to force them to pledge? And what about atheists, of which my son is one? Must they recite that crap about one nation under god? And how much allegiance can you feel with the current administration haphazardly bombing the shit out of Iraq on a daily basis?
Plus there was the kicker—if a kid opposed pledging, he or she could not counter the mandate on his or her own. He or she had to have permission from a parent to not pledge. Which, of course, prompted me to contact Henry’s then principal to say I fully supported my son should he choose not to engage in the morning jingoism exercise. (This still did not prevent him from getting in trouble with one teacher when he failed to salute.)
Speaking of the pledge, this leads me to one of two proposed solutions I hope Garrison will consider, though I know he won’t. They are:
1) If locking down the school when guns or ammunition are found seems too difficult due to time constraints, then I propose canceling the morning pledge and moment of silence and using this time saved to go ahead and do searches when bullets and guns are found. Call me crazy, but maybe this preventative measure could save even more time down the road, like the time it would take a forensics team to figure out, post-shooting, the path some disturbed student took gunning down peers in the hallways. Not to mention time saved identifying the dead and using the gym for overflowing memorial services.
2) Or, just a modest proposal here, maybe we should just give all the kids guns. You know, level the playing field. That way, instead of wasting time searching for guns, school could carry on as scheduled, with students feeling safe knowing that should someone pull a gun on them, they can go ahead and pull out their guns and (hopefully) shoot first. To defray costs, this program could be underwritten and sponsored by the NRA and Smith & Wesson.
As a victim of domestic violence, courtesy of my first ex-husband, I became accidentally a pseudo-expert on nutcases. I spent time researching stats, talking to the DA, Ronnie Earle, and his staff, and trying to determine if my ex was statistically likely to follow through on his threats, to move from stalking me to shooting me dead in the street. I mentioned my experience to Garrison, and told him this: Sure, the percentage of stalkers that transition from menacing psychological terrorists to out and out murderers is fairly minimal. But here’s the catch—you just don’t know, until you’re gasping for your last breath, just which loser is going to cross that line. So maybe a gun in school is statistically not a big deal. But you cannot accurately predict which gun-toting child is going to be pushed to the brink when (s)he decides (s)he cannot take one more day of shitty cafeteria food.
Garrison concludes his carefully worded letter as follows:
Finally, please feel free to contact my office if you have any questions or concerns you want to share. I assure you that the McCallum administration, faculty, and staff are committed to maintaining a safe school environment that is conducive to teaching and learning. We pledge to continue our vigilance in keeping McCallum a safe school.
Oh really? You could’ve fooled me.
Spike Gillespie’s next performance of The Dick Monologues is April 23rd at the Hyde Park Theatre. You can email her at spike@spikeg.com for ticket information. She blogs regularly at LaunchPadCoworking.com, www.spikeg.com, and www.sloppyquilter.com. She hopes you’ll remember to dress your children in bulletproof vests when sending them off to school.
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