2 Things

2 things in the news that weigh heavily on my mind. Terri Schiavo and Jeff Weise from Minnesota who killed to family members and shot 7 classmates. First up, Terri.

From the outside she doesn't seem to have a quality of life but then again, who decides what quality is nor isn't? Of course her parents want to keep her alive, all parents as well as many people, but in my opinion, all parents hold on to hope. You HOPE your kid gets the best education, job, family, life, etc and when that seems to be taken too soon, well you HOPE you can prolong things for your sake if anything. I'm not a parent but I can't sort of understand what Terri's parents feel. At the same time, I think back to my grandmother and her Alzheimers. Yea we could have forced fed her (after all, isn't that what a feeding tube is?), we could have forced her to live longer, but why? She got to the point in her life where she was using diapers and we couldn't bathe her because she was so heavy to lift. NOT that I loved my grandmother any less, I loved her with and still do with ever fiber of my being, but... to keep someone locked inside a shell just seems wrong to me. After all, if you really think about it, we are souls in a shell, a vessel.

Jeff Weise - I'm not mad at this kid, I'm saddened and perplexed. Surely there was someone out there who knew this kid was having problems. Surely someone could have said "I'm here for you Jeff". Kids are MEAN, very mean. I've seen this from the other side of the desk as I was a teacher and the way they talk about each other, make fun of each other is horrendous. Boys aren't too bad about it, I think the worse is to hear one boy attack another's masculinity, but girls, girls are fierce. Biting, scathing, cutting remarks that hit the bone.

Part of me really understand why this kid went off his rocker. He's human, and humans can only handle so much before they blow. Some of us find constructive ways to deal with it, some of us don't as is the case here. My guess is that Jeff (and I use his name because he is human and not some monster), was bullied and had had enough. On top of the fact that his father killed himself 2 years ago and you know that has to be hard for a boy to grow up without a father. I'm not excusing him, what he did was wrong, you just don't take someone else's life like that, but I do think the school, the mother, someone should have intervened. Talking to kids DOES WONDERS, it let's them know you care, you're interested, you want to know more about them and that's all many of them really need.

It saddens me that schools ignore this bullying syndrome that is so prevalent until something terrible happens and then it's all 'well so and so had problems'. No shit, but did you bother to find out what they were? We all have 'problems'.

In retrospect, I'm 33 and the world sometimes frightens me.