PLANK DECEMBER 14, 2012
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NEW HAVEN — My wife rushed through the front door at one o’clock this afternoon. I was sitting on the sofa in our family room, and our four-year-old daughter, Ellie—still hyper from another morning at nursery school—raced toward me, preparing for a violent jump onto my lap. Our two-year-old, Klara, was seated to my left, flipping through a picture book. As I braced for Ellie’s impact, my wife and I exchanged rueful looks. We had both heard about the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, 25 miles away. “Go down the street,” she told me, quietly and deliberately, “and make sure they don’t tell Rebekah.”
Rebekah is our eldest daughter, five years old, a first-grader at the elementary school at the end of our block. A natural enthusiast, she has enjoyed most every day since she started there a year and a half ago. We have never feared for her safety at school—and this day was no different. As I threw on my coat and charged down the block to the principal’s office, it wasn’t to pick Rebekah up.
When I arrived, I saw another dad, a man a little older than me, waiting on a bench outside the principal’s office. We looked at each other, nodded. He was there to pick up his son or daughter, I could tell. The principal and assistant principal were in a meeting—I could guess what they were talking about—so I scribbled a note and left it with the secretary in the front office. “Please don’t tell the students anything about what happened today,” it read.
Then I set off to find Rebekah’s teacher; I knew they had recess and would be outside in the playground, and sure enough they were. I tapped Mrs. _________ on the shoulder, startling her. She was clearly on edge. “It’s okay,” I said. “Nothing wrong. I just wanted to make sure that you didn’t say anything to the kids about … you know.”
“You should know me better than that!” she said, with good humor. Then, seriously, “I wouldn’t do that.”
“I should have figured,” I said. “It’s just that you never know when a grown-up thinks they’re being helpful, and …”
Rebekah spotted me—not an unusual occurrence during the school day. I often wave at her when my mid-day bicycle ride to the office coincides with her recess period. Her friends are used to saying, “Rebekah, your dad’s riding by!” Still, this was the first time I had stepped inside the playground during a school day.
“What are you doing here, Daddy?” she asked.
“Nothing, baby. Just saying hi to Mrs. _________.”
“Okay. Wait — don’t leave before you give me a hug!”
“I can’t give you a hug during the school day! I’ll get in trouble.”
Mrs. _________ laughed. “You’ll get in trouble if you don’t close the gate on the way out!” she said. I hugged Rebekah goodbye, and made sure to close the gate on my way out.
LATER ON, WHILE DRIVING DOWNTOWN, I was listening to coverage of the shootings on public radio. A woman caller—I can’t remember if she was a teacher or a mother—said that just last week she was in a Connecticut elementary school when it had an unannounced lockdown drill. She said that she didn’t think the children even knew what the drill was for, but it was “chilling.”
Right, the lockdown drills.
“Gone are the days,” The New York Times reported in 2008, “of the traditional fire drill, where students dutifully line up in hallways and proceed to the playground, then return a few minutes later. Now, in a ritual reminiscent of the 1950s, when students ducked under desks and covered their heads in anticipation of nuclear blasts, many schools are preparing for, among other emergencies, bomb threats, hazardous material spills, shelter-in-place preparation (in which students would use schools as shelters if a dirty bomb’s plume were to spread dangerously close) and armed, roaming sociopaths.”
And there are, of course, people making money from these drills. From the Times article: “Kenneth S. Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, a private company in Cleveland that counsels campuses on how to prepare for emergencies … sees a ‘tremendous lack of training’ nationally, particularly for school secretaries, bus drivers and other support staff.
“'Who’s going to take a bomb threat call? The secretary,’ he said. ‘And the first and last person a child sees many days is the bus driver. Who knows if there’s a suspicious person or object on campus? A custodian. Not only are teachers and administrators not trained, the support staff needs training as well.’”
That’s a lot of training. I went to Mr. Trump’s website, and indeed he is still in business, promising “peace of mind for school superintendents, school boards, principals, and their community partners on school safety and crisis preparedness issues.” No doubt today’s events in Newtown will increase demand for his services, for the “peace of mind” that his company provides. Maybe my daughter’s school will institute a regime of lockdown drills. Maybe it already has one—but I hope not.
Could lockdown drills have saved the children at Sandy Hook Elementary School? I have no idea. Indeed, I have no idea what kind of drilling those kindergartners, just four months into their school careers, may have got. Maybe the first drill was planned for January. But I doubt any drilling of 5- and 6-year-olds would have made a difference.
I know that Rebekah is not perfectly safe. I know that if a deranged gunman decided to mow down all the children in her kindergarten classroom, I couldn’t save her. And those parents and teachers in Newtown shouldn’t waste one second thinking they could have saved those kids and teachers. The world doesn’t work like that.
Here’s what we can control: as long as our children are alive, we can refuse to terrorize them with worst-case scenarios. We can decline to let a random act of violence goad us into treating Connecticut as if it were Gaza, Afghanistan, or Mali. I understand that there are parents in the world who have to teach their children about bomb shelters. But I don’t, not yet. My daughter is just five years old, and her school is as safe as we can make it without imprisoning ourselves in our own fear. My heart breaks for what happened 25 miles away; I’ve cried twice already today. But I’ve done it far from my children, who are still very young and, yes, innocent. So please: Don’t tell them a goddamned thing.
33 comments
You need to always find a way to explain horror, threats, tragedies. Your daughters will hear about this somewhere. You need to watch "Where the Heart Is", or just read this powerful scene, to understand why you have to find a way to explain the un-explainable: [Lexie, played by Ashley Judd]: "How did he find me, Novalee ? How do men like that find my kids ? How'd he know he could do such a thing to us ? He had to be lookin'. He was lookin' for women like me... who are alone with children... and women who are stupid. And they saw through him. They could tell he was evil. And all I saw was a Buick. Oh, God. What am I gonna tell my babies ? What am I gonna say... to Brownie and Praline when they ask me why this happened to them ? [ Sobbing ] What am I supposed to say, Novalee ? " [ Novalee, played by Natalie Portman, Sighs ] "You tell them-- you tell them that our-- our lives can change with every breath we take. We both know that. And you tell them to let go of what's gone. 'Cause men like Roger Brisco never win. And tell them to hold on like hell to what they've got-- each other, and a mother who would die for them... and almost did. You tell them we've all got meanness in us. But we've got good in us too. And the only thing worth livin' for is the good. And that is why we've got to make sure to pass it on. ..." http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/w/where-the-heart-is-script.html [The screenplay, written by Lowell Ganz, is based on the best-selling novel by Billie Letts.] "...in a ritual reminiscent of the 1950s, when students ducked under desks and covered their heads in anticipation of nuclear blasts, ..." was a totally empty ritual that scarred many of us for life - in terms of not believing what adults tell you. My Miami elementary school was 90 miles from Cuba, and I assure you that not one of us in 1960 or 1961 believed crouching under our desks had any useful purpose. But, I did beg my dad to build a bomb shelter. He was great - and explained about basements and why Miami did not have them (geology). And, being a veteran of WW2 and Korea, he also explained why we could not survive an atomic bomb. And, I stopped being scared of nuclear bombs.
- K2K
December 14, 2012 at 8:11pm
What a nightmare. I have 2 kids in elementary school and the security there is pretty lacking. You have to be buzzed in but it seems pretty pro forma, they can't see you. Besides, if you are carrying concealed weapons they couldn't see those especially with winter being here. At my Uni in Mexico the guards all were armed and there was a huge fence around the campus. I liked the security of it even though I never felt it was remotely needed (also considering there was a special forces base in town minutes away). Are we really going to need this in America now? Freaking NRA, they are a bunch of terrorists holding America hostage to their gun fetish. I wish we could revoke the second amendment.
- blackton
December 14, 2012 at 8:17pm
There is nothing to explain. We live in a very sick country, besieged by nuts. Yes, the NRA are a bunch of twisted terrorists holding us hostage over nothing other than their right to hold us hostage. I am ashamed of America.
- roidubouloi
December 14, 2012 at 11:01pm
I was driving with my daughter and almost 2 month old grandson in Toronto when I heard the terrible news. I simply couldn't believe what I had heard and the force of the realization that little kids had been slaughtered, I have two other grandsons, 7 and 5, who go to the same Toronto school, made me feel like I had been kicked in the stomach. I could not and cannot process the depths of such evil and such tragic loss but I can process the depths of the evil of the interests who obstruct rational gun control and restriction and who take the unfathomable position that assault weapons should be generally available. As to, "...children, who are still very young and, yes, innocent. So please: Don’t tell them a goddamned thing..." God yes.
- basman
December 15, 2012 at 1:46am
The gunman's mother collected guns. The gunman had a history of extreme tantrums. The mother was the fist killed. The gunman went to the school where his mother was a teacher. The gunman proceeded to do the massacre. Incredible horror. And in China attacks of school children by knives has been a recurring problem. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/world/asia/man-stabs-22-children-in-ch... Man Stabs 22 Children in China By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: December 14, 2012 BEIJING (AP) — A man wielding a knife wounded 22 children and one adult outside a primary school in central China as students were arriving for classes on Friday, the police said. The attack, in the village of Chengping in Henan Province, happened shortly before 8 a.m., said a police officer from Guangshan County, where the village is located. The attacker, Min Yingjun, 36, was subdued by security guards and taken into custody by the police, said the officer, who declined to give her name, which is customary among Chinese civil servants. Guards have been posted at schools across China after a spate of attacks in recent years. A Guangshan County hospital administrator said there were no deaths among the nine students admitted to the hospital, although two badly wounded children were transferred to better-equipped hospitals outside the county. A doctor at Guangshan’s hospital of traditional Chinese medicine said that seven students had been admitted there, but that none were seriously injured. It was not clear how old the wounded children were, but Chinese primary school students are generally 6 to 11. A notice on the Guangshan County government’s Web site confirmed the number of wounded and said an emergency response team had been set up to investigate the stabbings. No motive was given for the attack, which resembled a string of similar assaults against Chinese schoolchildren in 2010 that killed nearly 20 and wounded more than 50. The most recent such attack took place in August, when a man broke into a middle school in the southern city of Nanchang and stabbed two students before fleeing. Most of the attackers have been mentally disturbed men involved in personal disputes or unable to adjust to the rapid pace of social change in China, underscoring grave weaknesses in the antiquated Chinese medical system’s ability to diagnose and treat psychiatric illness. In one of the worst attacks, a man described as an unemployed, middle-aged doctor killed eight children with a knife in March 2010 to vent his anger over a thwarted romantic relationship.
- JAIMECHUCH
December 15, 2012 at 5:05am
Thank you JaimeChurch. It's a bit disturbing that the liberals here blame the NRA, and the conservatives (elsewhere) want to incarcerate the "mentally ill". Neither side of our partisan chasm understands why people "go postal" -the phrase that emerged when it used to be USPS employees who showed up enraged, with a gun.
- K2K
December 15, 2012 at 7:32am
I tried Jaime's link and got a "Page Not Found We’re sorry, we seem to have lost this page,...." http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/world/asia/man-stabs-22-children-in-ch
- arnon1
December 15, 2012 at 8:05am
"The gunman's mother collected guns." What is the source for this comment? I read many accounts of the shooting in the NY Times and elsewhere but couldn't find any statement about the gunman's mother collecting guns.
- arnon1
December 15, 2012 at 8:31am
The guns were registered to the mother's name.
- Noga
December 15, 2012 at 11:00am
"The guns were registered to the mother's name." And that explains what?
- arnon1
December 15, 2012 at 11:14am
""Sources told Fox News the guns used in the shooting were owned by and legally registered to Nancy Lanza." Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/12/15/at-least-26-dead-in-shooting-at-connecticut-school/#ixzz2F8luhhjU http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/12/15/at-least-26-dead-in-shooting-at-connecticut-school/
- JAIMECHUCH
December 15, 2012 at 11:59am
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/15/us/connecticut-school-shooting/index.html?hpt=hp_t1 "Lanza may have had access to at least five guns, a law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the investigation said Saturday. Three weapons were recovered from the school on Friday: a semi-automatic .223 caliber rifle made by Bushmaster was found in a car in the school parking lot, and two pistols made by Glock and Sig Sauer were found with suspected gunman Lanza's body, a law enforcement source said previously. The weapons were legally purchased by Lanza's mother, said the official, who was not authorized to release details of the case to the media. Vance said all of the weaponry that investigators recovered was found in "close proximity" to Lanza's body. "We're investigating the history of each and every weapon, and we will know every single thing about those weapons," he said. After killing his mother, investigators believe Lanza took her guns and made his way to the elementary school. There, dressed in black fatigues and a military vest, according to a law enforcement official, Lanza reportedly targeted two classrooms of kindergartners and first-graders."
- JAIMECHUCH
December 15, 2012 at 12:10pm
roi. As in health care, we are WAY behind the rest of the civilized world in gun control. There is every reason to use the emotional aspect of this tragedy to control gun use and access. The issue is already politicized by the NRA who have been very successful in presenting their emotional arguments to sway voters.. The Radium Girls, Triangle Shirtwaist Girls, Metawan/Harlan County Miners, Thalidimide babies,Love Canal infants did not die or suffer entirely in vein because their heart-rendering examples were openly used to put the face of innocents on tragedies due to regulatory failures. And regulations eventually occurred in part because of the tragedies.
- drofnats1
December 15, 2012 at 12:13pm
What is the argument emerging on this thread over the recounting of what specifically happened? Does it have something to do with the Chinese guy stabbing 22 kids, or what's the relevance of that? I can't make any of this out.
- basman
December 15, 2012 at 12:16pm
drofnats1 "roi. As in health care, we are WAY behind the rest of the civilized world in gun control." Who cares, this is another phony argument. If we were ahead of the world in health care? Would that prove that we have done everything possible to deal with the problem? No. The standard should not be "the rest of the world" but our own needs. Obviously we need more and better healthcare.
- arnon1
December 15, 2012 at 12:28pm
It is beyond my ability to understand why any state would enable its citizens to buy assault weapons. For defensive reasons, there are guns. For those who like to hunt, there are hunting rifles. What's the rationale for making access to automatic weapons easy or even possible? People cite the second amendment as if it were an article of faith, as if the realities that had prompted its formulation are still present and valid. At the very least it should be reformed to reflect modern day circumstances. Is there any other country in the world that allows its citizens to purchase privately an M16 or something like that?
- Noga
December 15, 2012 at 12:48pm
basman, none of those 22 kids died in China so it is a crazy false equivalency. China has also a much bigger population 5X, is much poorer and has far less money for school security and mental health care yet has about the same amount of homicides (not just comparable percentage, but flat out). K2K, if people don't have ready access to guns, who cares if they go "postal"? At most they will attack people with knifes and can be far more readily subdued. If you have a knife I have a chance, if you have a gun I am at the mercy of your aim. Even if Mexico all of the violence is cartel related. Schools are safer in Mexico than in the United States (as to quality of the instruction, that is another matter but at least when you send off your kids to school you know they will be coming back barring natural catastrophe or accident)
- blackton
December 15, 2012 at 12:51pm
12/15/2012 - 12:48pm EDT | Noga Could not agree more.
- basman
December 15, 2012 at 12:51pm
arnon. Are you saying we need better health care, but not better gun control.. ??? And if you realy want to get insular, who cares what anyone or any country does, mucl less succeeds at, so long as I got mine??
- drofnats1
December 15, 2012 at 1:24pm
It also now appears as of late this morning that the mother may not have been a teacher or indeed any other kind of employee at the school (I've heard nothing new since I read that on Slate.com's update but it all may change as new information comes out).
- ironyroad
December 15, 2012 at 3:32pm
They said she was a substitute or a volunteer teacher at the school.
- Noga
December 15, 2012 at 3:37pm
drofnats1 "arnon. Are you saying we need better health care, but not better gun control.. ??? And if you realy want to get insular, who cares what anyone or any country does, mucl less succeeds at, so long as I got mine??" You completely misread my reply. (Was it on purpose?) I am not saying that we should choose between health care and gun control, we need both. I am also not saying we should be "insular" whatever that means to you. I am saying that we need better health care in this country whether or not the rest of the world has better or worse health care. Our health care system should not be conditional on the quality of health care in the rest of the world. Why is this so hard to understand, drofnats?
- arnon1
December 15, 2012 at 3:41pm
Life is dangerous. Nobody gets out alive. No man (or woman) is an island. Every major religious group and every major political group (secular or religious) has comitted atrocities and mass killings and performed serious random acts of kindness and created senseless acts of beauty. Everyone over the age of 65 should be banned from posting comments. (I am about a month away from turning 69. However, I have a subscription to TNR, which grandfathers me in.) Don't kill, except in self-defense, and with three credible witnesses or at least co-comspirators.
- skahn
December 15, 2012 at 3:58pm
To skahn: JUST A FEW WORDs: GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE.
- arnon1
December 15, 2012 at 4:21pm
drofnats1 “arnon. Are you saying we need better health care, but not better gun control.. ??? And if you realy want to get insular, who cares what anyone or any country does, mucl less succeeds at, so long as I got mine??” Let me try again, drofnats. I ha ve a feeling thjat my previous posts did not reach their target. What do you mean by “the rest of the world,” drofnats? Do you mean China which has lots and lots of people? Obviously not, since their mental health care system is almost non existent. Or, do you mean India, which also has lot and lots of people? Probably not since it too had lots and lots of poor people and barely a mental health care worker in sight. Maybe you mean Indonesia or Egypt the two most populous Muslim countries. Do you think they have better health care than the US. Now I grant you that if you go to South America you will find some excellent psychiatrists in Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago de Chile, Montevideo and probably some other large cities, but for most of the countries mental health care is in its infancy. As for Mexico I will let Blackton answer that one. So most of the world does not have better mental health care the US, but that is not what you meant, is it? Bt the rest of the world you meant EUROPE. Yet even there you have to subtract Russia, Albania, Serbia and a couple of other countries and then you might be right. Hungary used to have cutting edge mental health till all they all left for Buenos Aires which is why it and some other South American cities have decent mental health. (But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?) But France, Germany, England, Scandinavia is not “the rest of the world” and it’s a bit racist to pretend that it is. So the US isn’t so bad off compared to the rest of the world, is it? Is this the standard you wish to impose on us? I say nuts to that. We can do a lot better than that. We need a mental health care system that will help some of our mentally forlorn citizens. What we don’t need is to compare ourselves to the “rest of the world,” or to Europe which also isn’t doing very well. Take a look at France.
- arnon1
December 15, 2012 at 4:37pm
and Noga, I agree 100%
- blackton
December 15, 2012 at 6:42pm
skahn is correct: Life is dangerous. and, the government can not protect everyone from everything.
- K2K
December 15, 2012 at 8:14pm
"and, the government can not protect everyone from everything." This is another stupid red-herring. Just because the government can't protect you from everything does it mean that it shouldn't protect you from anything? Do you want to take drugs that weren't tested and approved by the government. Would you like all drugs to be like the steroid treatment made by a Framingham pharmacy which sickened and killed people. You of all people who claims to be very sick are you against governments testing the drugs you take? You and skahn sound like two nasty old men who because you will die soon don't care how many children are murdered.
- arnon1
December 15, 2012 at 8:42pm
K2K "skahn is correct: Life is dangerous. and, the government can not protect everyone from everything." The thought came to when I read K@K's reaction to s@Kahn that the governments should not protect us from islamic terrorist attacks, from nuclear threats by Iran and whomever. After all, "life is dangerous" so let's just drink, be merry, for tomorrow we will be killed by some deranged and obsessed lunatic.
- arnon1
December 15, 2012 at 9:52pm
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/12/what-can-we-do-to-stop-massacres/266300/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/12/the-case-for-more-guns-and-more-gun-control/309161/ Both of these links are Jeffrey Goldberg's analysis and opinions. Just in case anyone thinks reading different point of views is worthwhile. Or, for anyone just tired of arnon's thread stalking style of bullying, almost always based on arnon's inability to comprehend what he reads.
- K2K
December 16, 2012 at 9:13am
"Or, for anyone just tired of arnon's thread stalking style of bullying, almost always based on arnon's inability to comprehend what he reads." A thee year old would be able to comprehend the nonsense you post, K@K. You seem to feel that replying to your slogans is a form of "bullying" in that case I suggest you go post on forums where everyone agrees with your pro gun anti-union point of view. And btw: I thought you weren't going to renew your subscription to TNR?
- arnon1
December 16, 2012 at 9:53am
As for Goldberg, how do his views differ from those of most people here, except for that of K@K and a couple of other posters? "2) There are, however, some gun control laws that could be strengthened. The so-called gun-show loophole (which is not a loophole at all -- 40 percent of all guns sold in America legally are sold without benefit of a federal background check) should be closed. Background checks are no panacea -- many of our country's recent mass-shooters had no previous criminal records, and had not been previously adjudicated mentally ill -- but they would certainly stop some people from buying weapons. 3) We must find a way to make it more difficult for the non-adjudicated mentally ill to come into possession of weapons. This is crucially important, but very difficult, because it would require the cooperation of the medical community -- of psychiatrists, therapists, school counselors and the like -- and the privacy issues (among other issues) are enormous. But: It has to be made more difficult for sociopaths, psychopaths and the otherwise violently mentally-ill (who, in total, make up a small portion of the mentally ill population) to buy weapons." http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/12/what-can-we-do-to-stop-massacres/266300/ He also believes that people should be able to defend themselves. This view is also, unremarkable.
- arnon1
December 16, 2012 at 10:01am
for the last time arnon: my subscription expires Dec 27. Please stop inventing lies about me until after I disappear. Your current Big Lie about me? "anti-union point of view." At no time have I ever expressed any opinion on the internet about unions. What? arnon can not comprehend that a registered democrat is not a liberal on every single issue? I have tried to ignore you, but you just can't stop bullying me. and embarrassing yourself.
- K2K
December 17, 2012 at 1:44am