Today the flag was flying at half-mast in front of the Columbia office building where I work. It's been 23 years since I was a student at Virginia Tech.
Like many Americans, I watched the news reports on MSNBC.com and FoxNews.com closely on Monday and Tuesday, sometimes pausing from my work to listen to the latest updates on my computer. I keep asking myself, 'What has this world come to?'
I guess none of us has the answer to that. It's a different world than the one I grew up in.
I don't recall ever having a fear of being gunned down at school. Of course, I was in high school and college in the 70's and 80's. The campus shootings in Texas occurred when I was just an infant, so I was never really aware of it. And it seemed like an isolated incident at the time, in 1966. But since the 90's, our society has had to endure multiple senseless school shootings throughout the country.
Although this week's carnage is devastating for these young students who have (or had) their whole lives ahead of them, it's the parents that I really felt for as the news unfolded the past couple of days. I can't imagine the fear that the parents of those 26,000 Tech students went through on Monday and Tuesday this week, wondering if their child had survived the day or not. I wouldn't want to be one of those parents.
It's sad. I wish I could have had kids of my own. But I frequently have to wonder what is the point of bringing kids into this world? You send them to school, you worry that they'll get shot up by a nut job. You send them to work, you worry if a plane or a bomb is going to level the building they're in. You send them to church, you wonder if the priest is going to make sexual advances. You put them in a car, you wonder if a driver suffering from road rage (or drunkenness) is going to run them off the road.
It's no wonder we're all stressed out. I doubt I could handle that much worry all the time. I don't know how parents do it these days. I think they have the toughest job of all.
They say "mother" is a verb, not a noun. That's definitely a truisim for most moms. Here's to all the Va Tech moms. My heart goes out to you.
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