An Amalgamation

I live fairly close to a school and, as I type, announcements are being made about an (yet another) upcoming lockdown drill. Instructions to lock doors, turn off lights, hide from sight, teachers to open red bags, etc. It makes my heart hurt to listen. It also reminds me of a “Mother Jones” article I’ve read in the past, where they interviewed elementary school children about what lockdown drills are like for them.

Guns are not going away in the U.S., so it would be fruitless to suggest that as an answer. Maybe the best way to curb school shootings is to invest in mental healthcare? But again, living in the U.S., that is unlikely to happen as people’s lives aren’t as important as shareholder returns to private insurance corporations. Metal detectors and school resource officers help, but change the atmosphere of the school… and still allow the possibility of violence.

I don’t know, maybe some of the younger people could answer how this affects them, long term. I know, being GenX, we lived with a different kind of existential threat: the threat of nuclear war. It was everywhere – movies, TV, books, duck and cover drills (which didn’t last long into my school career), political rhetoric and the constant cold war flares. Hell, it was even on Top 40 radio! “Russians” by Sting, “99 Luftballoons” by Nena, “I Melt With You” by Modern English, etc. I remember being young and sitting on a swing, looking into the sky for Russian (even though it was the USSR, we called them “Russia”) bombers.

It’s been suggested that the nuclear threat is part of what created the “whateverness” of GenX. I know it still affects me to this day. I don’t obsess over it, but wherever I live, I occasionally consider the distance of tactical targets. If I’d be lucky enough to just be evaporated and not have to live with burns, blindness, total chaos and the radioactive fallout. It’s actually a relief to me, being within a few miles of a high priority target.

I wonder what strange thing the children who have and are growing up during the era of school shootings will take some comfort in?