BETWEEN THE LINES: IS THERE AN EXPLANATION FOR THE LATEST SCHOOL SHOOTING?

One of the difficulties of any job is becoming so accustomed to your work that it has no meaning or effect on your life.

While it's not always true of everyone, I can understand how it occurs. It is easy to become hardened and cynical, especially working in the news business, so that you aren't hurt by the job.

I'm one of the most soft-hearted people you're ever likely to meet, I'll admit. I stop to rescue every stray animal and lost child around. But I have to put all that away when I go to work. It's too easy to become depressed and angry at the world otherwise.

Reporters and editors see deaths, disasters and crime on a fairly routine basis. It's easier not to get attached to any subject or source, so that when disaster strikes journalists can stay objective.

It sounds good in theory, but it doesn't always work.

It's not so much that I can't remain objective as it is that I am emotionally outraged at the school shootings happening across the country.

Violence has become a way of life. Kids carrying guns to school don't even seem as unbelievable today as they did just months ago.

I've simply had a difficult time understanding the need for such violence in schools. Much like the rest of you, I don't understand what is going on.

Why do these students feel like they need to shoot classmates and teachers?

What's so awful that they have to take such desperate measures? They're only teen-agers. And no matter how awful they think their life is now, it could get worse as they get older.

Of course, the minute they decide to shoot a classmate, things already are worse than they were.

Such desperate measures have a lasting effect. These teen-agers weren't likely to think about what happens to them after the shooting is over.

It only created more problems for them instead of correcting the existing ones.

I listened to a broadcast journalist Monday explaining how the teen-ager in Springfield, Ore., shot his classmates in the school cafeteria and then pulled a knife on police officers while being taken to a juvenile center.

While two students have died in the shooting, many were affected by it, the reporter had said. What this young man did would forever change these students. Now their lives will be marked by how they reacted or what they saw in that school cafeteria. It wasn't exactly how they'd planned things to be.

Unfortunately, life isn't always as we would have planned. It has this uncanny ability to surprise us when we least expect it.

And America has been surprised and shocked by these terrible crimes.

The shock isn't so much the actual violence because sociologists likely have predicted such behavior from our society. What's so shocking is that no one would have guessed the criminals would be so young and appear so innocent.

What happened to the simple joys of childhood and carefree days of schoolchildren? Now they're so caught up in problems that they see an instant solution in violence. Maybe violence isn't the real problem after all; it's just the scapegoat.

~Laura Johnston is a copy editor for the Southeast Missourian.