LETTERS FROM HOME: FIGHTING AGAINST BECOMING TRAGICALLY NUMB

March 9, 2001

Dear Carly and Kim,

I'm sure your parents have spoken with you about the boy who killed two of his classmates in California earlier this week. I'm sure they tried to comfort you and reassure you that it's still safe to go to school. I'm not sure adults understand what's going on any more than you do. When we were in school, we were concerned about our grades and making the team, not getting killed.

Besides the loss of life, I am grieving because we are slowly becoming numb to the tragedy of children getting killed.

I was on the treadmill at the gym a few mornings ago when a news show asked the question, School threats: When should we pay attention?

How about now?

Each time it happens, we adults wring our hands and wonder whether TV and movies and music are at fault for making bloodshed number one at the box office, if we're at fault for going to those movies and watching those TV shows and buying those CDs, if we're bad parents for letting our kids do the same, or we blame the people who allow guns to be so easy for children to get and to fire.

We know that children who kill other children often have been picked on at school. Adults think, I was picked on at school, but I didn't blow anyone away. We're wrong to think growing up 10, 20, 30, 40 or 50 years ago is the same as it is in 2001.

Playtime has shifted from pinball to "Doom."

Seventy million handguns are floating around in America today, some hidden in closets where kids know all the hiding places, some in lockers. There is no safety in that number.

Your aunt gets scared sometimes when bad things happen. Sometimes she thinks she'd be happy to stay home with her eight birds, five fish and two dogs, and her big yard with the high fence.

"I'd have everything I need," Aunt DC says.

When she got hungry, the pizza guy would deliver one with sausage. When she missed her friends, she'd call them on the telephone even though she doesn't like telephones.

Phoning isn't quite the same as looking into your friends' eyes and hugging them, I say.

Aunt DC would stay home and give her garden so much attention it would be beautiful. But no one else would ever see it.

Aunt DC thinks she could live her whole life in the house and in the yard with her birds and her fish and her dogs. She thinks she could be happy without other people around.

"I still haven't heard a good enough reason to leave," she says to me.

This is all I can think of: One reason we are alive is to learn to get along with each other, as the Bible says to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. But loving yourself can be the hardest thing to do. We know all our faults, and if we don't other people will point them out for us.

Did you ever get your feelings hurt because someone said something mean to you or about you? You don't have to shoot people to hurt them.

Be kinder to yourselves, Carly and Kim, and you will be amazed how easy it is to give other people a break.

Don't let the awful things that sometimes happen make you afraid. None of us is as good as we can be or as bad as we are at our worst.

Love, Sam