The 27th Victim

Throughout the entire post-Newtown CT shooting tragedy there have been heartfelt tributes to the "26 victims" of Adam Lanza's terroristic shooting spree. Just ... 26. Church bells around this country pealed 26 times today.  There are "26 angels" watching over us all, from Newtown to every town.

But there is a 27th victim that everyone seems to be purposely and deliberately overlooking. His mother Nancy. 

Personally, I have purposely and deliberately eschewed a lot of the news reports surrounding this story. I do not want to wallow in the national sadness, and it gets none of us anywhere to sit for 24 hours in front of a TV and look at pictures of beautiful children and their teachers, all dead.

And I am about 500% done with friends on Facebook and Twitter furiously freaking out on either side of any political fence surrounding this pasture of sadness. Relentlessly.

There are too many crazy people, lock them all up! We need more compassion to help those with mental illness! There are too many automatic and semi automatic weapons and they should all be banned, hell ALL guns should be banned! There aren't enough guns! If teachers had guns, or if there was a trained guard at the door, no one would be dead today except Adam Lanza. There are too many violent video games and TV shows in the world! It's all his mother's fault everyone is dead. It's not his mother's fault, he would have found a way to kill her and others whether or not those guns were hers. 

I don't understand why Adam Lanza did what he did, I don't. I don't think anyone ever will. And I am okay with us never understanding why. We don't need an answer really other than evil finds evil, no matter what.

But as a parent of a kid who isn't 100% perfect, who is weird and who has said and done things in the past that disturb and frighten the disturbable and frightenable, well... I can't help but feel horrible for Nancy Lanza. And the fact that her death does not matter, is not counted amongst the victims, saddens me to my core.

I am sure she did the best she could with the hand she was dealt. I have to fault her with keeping weapons IN HER HOUSE (duh) with a child/adult living there who simply was not doing well mentally from all accounts. But does she deserve to be brushed aside, hated, denied a place with the other 26?

Am I alone in this? If I am, that's okay. Tonight I have a burning candle and equally burning tears for a mom who ... well, didn't deserve this, and doesn't deserve to be forgotten.

once upon a time

Today there was a horrible shooting in Newtown CT where a 20 year old man walked into an elementary school and killed a horrible amount of people, 20 children and 6 adults, before killing himself.

I have nothing to say about gun control or mental illness (whether or not he had some diagnosed illness is something I do not know).

What I want to tell you is when Geoff was in fourth grade they did a lot of training with the elementary school staff and children for an event such as this. Geoff insisted that if there was a gunman in the school in the building at his door wherever, he was going to fight him.

"They told us that we were to get with out teacher and huddle in the corner. But I'm not going to huddle in the corner. I am going to throw a chair at him. I will fight him. I will stop him from hurting the other children. If he gets through the locked door, I will stop him."

Tonight, I remember these words from him over six years ago, when he was small, and full of this passion and anger and fight. I let him know that the best bet for his survival and the other kids' survival would be to huddle in that corner and wait for it all to blow over like "Sean of the Dead" when they say "Let's go down to the Winchester, have a pint and wait for this all to blow over..."

Part of me was proud of him to be that balls to the wall fighter. Geoff's Fuck Yeah attitude has always impressed me. It isn't machismo, it isn't pride. It isn't a testosterone fueled insanity. That's just plain selflessness that I know is such a part of him. And... Part of me wanted my baby to always be counted as safe.

All these years later, it is all I can think of tonight.

In the meantime, a former classmate of the college I attended lost his daughter today. She was very little. And didn't have someone like Geoff standing between her and a gunman throwing a chair at him and yelling at him to fuck off... tonight I mourn Charlotte, even though I never met her...

Comments Moderation

I switched over to Blogger in 2010 because the hand-made blog I had painstakingly built over the years was becoming obsolete due to the fact the comments system I was using was switching over to something that my brain could no longer comprehend. I figured jumping through flaming red hoops so people could give me feedback was stupid. Blogger equalled easy. Someday I'll put my own domain on this so my URL isn't stupid long and stupid stupid, but in the meantime, it suffices.

I noticed over time that no one was commenting anymore. I would get 50-80 visits a day, from all over the place, and no one said anything. People used to comment. Then... nada, zilcho, nuttin.

Angelalalalalalalalaaaa said that the Captcha on the comments was hard to read, and sometimes impossible to get past. So... I made a couple of changes.

I got rid of the captcha, and turned on comments moderation.

Turns out, a lot of people are commenting on my blog and they're all spammers. Stupid mothereffing spammers. And perhaps 45 of the 50 visitors a day are really just bots finding my blog, and the captcha was stopping their stupid crap from coming on board. Now I see.

So. I don't even know why I should even bother with comments anymore.

I feel like a voice in the wilderness.