I registered my first baby for high school yesterday. 9th grade. Freshman year. We had to map out the next 4 years. We had to think about future college admissions requirements- like do we need 2 years of foreign language or 3? Some colleges like to see 3. ( He's 14, so, he doesn't know where he wants to go to college.) He is already signed up for his first AP class and will end up with an AP focus. That's exactly one more AP class than I ever took. He is signed up for Honors Algebra 2 which is farther than I ever made it in math in my entire life. He's 14. He is my baby. The blonde baby that I gave birth to and then almost died without holding. So, I was already kind of feeling a bit emotional. I really only have a little over 4 more years left with him.
Then I go home. I am folding laundry, as is my life, and have the TV turned on to NBC to watch some Winter Olympics. Breaking News!!! They break in to the Olympics to tell me that another mass shooting has taken place in a Florida High School. Oh, and its the 18th school shooting of the year. Its only February. A suburban high school in Florida. 17 kids dead. 17 kids just like mine and yours. Dead. From an angry kid with an automatic weapon. So, as you can imagine, I don't take this news well. There is really nothing to say to make me feel better. It's Valentine's Day and Ash Wednesday so Mothers, just like me, wearing their heart shirts and ash crosses on their foreheads have to receive news that their kid isn't going to college so it doesn't matter how many years of foreign language she took.
I am tired of hearing about kids dying at school. I am tired of thinking about it and reading about it on social media. I'm tired of seeing people fight about it on social media. Everyone thinks they have the answer when really there is not one perfect answer. I'm tired of wondering when it will happen in my suburban high school.
Angry mothers carry quite a bit of power. Angry mothers will not be quiet.
