Surviving the Unimaginable

Survivors of the horrific mass shooting at Uvalde Elementary School have begun to have interviews aired.  Seeing these little kids recounting the trauma they suffered is heart breaking and I saw this clip: https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/uvalde-students-speak-out-after-surviving-school-shooting-140955205960 I think what breaks my heart is knowing they will not forget this and the memories will stay with them forever.

I know.

On December 13, 1972, I was 17 and entered my first period psychology class.  I was a senior and life was good.  Soon it would be my birthday and then Christmas.  My best friend normally sat next to me and we’d pass notes but she was helping our guitar teacher that morning. 

Our windows faced the quadrangle, which is where we could take our lunch breaks in better weather or take smoke breaks in the designated area.  We could see the cafeteria.  First period hadn’t really begun yet and our teacher was rounding up the rest of the stragglers before the bell rang.  Suddenly, students poured out of the cafeteria into the quad, screaming. 

We ran to our windows and opened them, letting in the frigid air.  We wanted to know what was going on.  A couple of girls stumbled over and yelled, “He’s got a knife!  He’s chasing us with a knife!”  Who?  But then all hell broke loose.

Our teacher ran in and locked both doors to the classroom even as our assistant principal shouted over the intercom, “Lock all doors!  Teachers, lock all doors!  This is an emergency!”

Someone rattled our back door knob for a few seconds and then was gone.  We heard pounding footsteps from the hallway around the corner from us, which then ran down to the cafeteria and music rooms.  There was more screaming from one girl and the sound of a door slamming to the custodial closet in the hallway behind us.

A man was shouting, “Shut up! Shut up!”

The girl answered hysterically: “Get that knife off my neck!”

I can’t speak to you about what that 15-year-old sophomore was experiencing, being held hostage and being threatened with death by a custodian who'd totally lost his mind.

I can only speak to what it was like being in the next room and listening to her scream and beg and pray to God he’d let her go.  And he would answer “There is no God and you are going to die.”

Once the SWAT team arrived, we had to lie down on the stone-cold floor.  Some of my classmates began to sob with fear or in sympathy with the hostage.  Our teacher was quick to hush them.  “If we can hear them, they’ll be able to hear us,” she cautioned.  “We don’t want to set him off and kill her.”  And I can imagine the other teachers near the slaughter room comforting and quieting their own students.

So, we were quiet.  Some continued to pray quietly; some whispered softly; some tried to occupy the time we waited.  I was reading “Exodus” by Leon Uris and began reading.  I tried not to think about what was happening or what might happen. I tried not to worry about my best friend. The floor was so cold and my stress must have been so high, my body began to tremble.  The shaking would start in my toes, move up my legs to my torso, spread to my arms and hands so that holding the book was difficult and then even my head shook.  The tremors would subside and then begin again all over.  My fingernails turned blue.

It was May in Alaverde, so not cold.  All the other students who had to hide were little, maybe 7-10?  I wondered, were they able to move close to friends to whisper and hold hands?  Did they worry about friends they had in the killing room?  Did they read books too?  It's not easy for a little kid to hold still for an hour.  They're meant to move around.

It was timeless, all of us lying there.  We could see SWAT officers right outside the windows, their huge rifles as terrifying as the girl’s piteous cries.  They'd brought a negotiator with them.   Did those hesitant police in Alaverde bring a negotiator?  But in situations like that, a killer with an automatic weapon comes to slaughter, not to talk.

There did come a time, though, when the girl's screams and the man's shouts dwindled away to nothing.  There came a time when we heard a noise at the back door and those closest to it saw adult feet racing a stretcher up the hall.  We heard sobbing and knew the girl was safe and on that stretcher.

We all sat up.  The relief and release of tension was almost palpable.  Then we heard what I thought was one big blast and we all went diving for the floor again.  The SWAT team shot the custodian at least 11 times when he charged them with the machete.

The assistant principal came over the loudspeaker again and said anyone who wanted to leave and go home, could.  I stayed long enough to be reunited with my bestie.  There were no feelings then, just cold numbness.  Like a robot, I took two buses to get to our neighborhood.  My brother met me there; he’d heard what happened on the radio at his school and walked out.

That weekend, news coverage brought tears.  On Monday, the thought of going back to school brought on panic attacks but I went anyway.  Our psychology teacher wanted us to write down what we remembered.  What a horrible assignment.  Still, I filled about 10 pages, my handwriting going from a neat script to a large scrawl.  There was no such thing as crisis intervention teams or comfort dogs.  I am glad the surviving children and teachers will have access to them.

Here’s what I know:  after a couple of weeks, the worst of it seems to subside.  Then a year passes and the anniversary comes up.  Bam!  Memories are so strong, it’s like it’s happening again.  It’s the same with the 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th anniversaries and on days when something similarly horrific happens in a school.  All these almost 50 years, it feels like a knife to the heart when something like Alaverde or Margery Stoneman Douglas or Sandy Hook, Buffalo, and every other place there’s been a massacre occurs.  Thinking of what happened on December 13, 1972 hasn’t hit as strongly as it used to.  It really does hit hard every time someone walks into a place (school, store, club, doesn’t matter) with an AK-15 and starts shooting to kill.

Those poor kids.  They had to hide and be quiet.  They had to hear the screams of their classmates in that room with the shooter.  The little ones in there with the shooter had to think creatively and gruesomely to stay alive.  Memories will travel with them, even if they get counseling.  Counseling can help you understand why you remember these things.  Counseling doesn’t make them go away. 

Going without counseling is worse.  Then you bury your feelings and memories.  They come out anyway, in nightmares and depression and suppressed anger.

All because of a weapon in the hands of a person who never should've had one.

I understand the need for the 2^nd Amendment.  However, banning assault/automatic weapons is not undoing the 2^nd Amendment.  Civilians do not need AK-15s or any assault weapon.   These are weapons specifically for killing people because of the mutilating damage they cause.  That’s why some of the parents had to provide DNA, so that authorities could identify which unrecognizable child belonged to which family.

Thoughts and prayers don’t cut it anymore.  Defensive and deflective tactics by the GQP don’t cut it anymore.

The GQP claims to stand for “pro-life”.  No.  They do not care about anyone once they are born.  What happened to the GOP, that grand old party?  Those that disagree with what the GQP shenanigans, why won’t you make a stand and do the right thing?  Where is your courage, your backbone?

It's going to happen again and again because nothing is going to change.  More survivors will be left with traumatic memories and more families will grieve.  As for me, I'm doing what I can to advocate for automatic weapons such as the one used to murder those children and teachers to be banned.

 

 

 

Gen Z Rocks!

There’s a lot to admire about Gen Z.  They are the generation coming up the ranks now and are between 10 and 25 years old.  Most of our grandchildren are “zoomers” and I’m glad that’s another name for them because they remind me of us Baby Boomers when we were young.  We were the generation that brought down a President (Lyndon B. Johnson) because of the unpopular Viet Nam War.  I don’t remember seeing such a movement with Gen X or Millennials as I’m seeing now with young people.

Gen Z kids are a lot more tech savvy than us old fogey Boomers.  They’re as passionate, if not more, than we ever were about wars, the environment, racial injustice and other social issues.  Three examples right off the bat:

Greta Thunberg who, at 15, staged a one student protest about climate change that inspired many more young people to speak up and DO something.  She has an abrasive quality to her manner but that’s perfectly understandable: she’s tired of the bullshit denials and platitudes of those who won’t legislate and change how we use our resources.  She will be a formidable young woman.  She is 19 now and will go far.

Then there’s David Hogg, survivor of the Margery Stoneman Douglas school massacre in 2018.  After that, in spite of being stalked by the lunatic Congressfool Marjorie Taylor Greene, has organized protests against gun violence and has become a gun control advocate.  Right now, he’s involved in organizing marches in several large cities this June 11 to protest gun violence.  He’s 22 years old now and a student at Harvard.  I would like to see him run for public office.

I don’t want to leave out Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan, the girl who would be educated and was shot in the head for it.  She’s a human rights activist now for women’s rights and is 24.

Other Zoomers:

Amanda Gorman, the youngest US poet laureate, who recently wrote another moving poem in the aftermath of the Uvalde massacre

Athletes Simone Biles, Naomi Osaka, Chloe Kim, and Lydia Ko

More actors/actresses and singers/musicians than I can name

Zoomers have protested injustice against people of color and LGBTQ.  Kids walked out of their classes this week to protest the lack of response from our do-nothing Congress about yet another massacre of children so close on the mass murder of elderly black people.

I am thrilled to see so many Gen Z entering into politics.  I will vote for them and I look forward to positive changes they will make.

Confused by all the generations?  Check out this link:

https://www.kasasa.com/exchange/articles/generations/gen-x-gen-y-gen-z

 

Asperger's

I’ve recently been in touch with a mom who has a son with Asperger’s Syndrome.  It isn’t called that now, I know, but it’s the one I’m most familiar with and first heard in the 1990s.  This mom thinks that she’s got Aspie characteristics herself and is trying to decide whether or not she wants a diagnosis.  She believes she will feel even more stigmatized and isolated than she already does if it's so.

When my eldest was about 7 and in second grade, some issues came up and Rich and I sought out a therapist for him.  We found someone we liked and she began sessions with our son.  After a couple of them, she took me aside and asked if I’d ever heard of Asperger’s Syndrome.  I hadn’t.  She explained what it was and then said she thought my son had those characteristics.

My blood went cold.  Autism?  My brilliant baby boy?  Surely not.  He was very highly verbal and creative in his thinking.  He had lots of neighborhood and class friends.  Yet.  His voice had an atonal quality to it, often sounding flat.  No inflection.  When he played with his Match Box cars, he would lie on the floor on his side and line them up.  He didn’t have the cars crash or speak.  He’d lie quietly and move all the cars up, then back.  Up, then back.  I look back now and wonder how I didn’t see it.

The therapist also said he had ADHD, the type with constant motion.  That was something we understood a bit better.  We met with school administrators and their psychologist got involved to see if my son needed an IEP.  The answer: no.  My son, they felt, needed to be in the gifted and talented program and the IQ they felt he had meant no IEP.  They did, however, give him a 504 plan because he also had dysgraphia.

As he grew older, I noted my son becoming more reclusive.  I found out he was ostracized at school beginning with middle school.  I discussed it with the school counselor who implied that it seemed to be my son’s fault.  His response to being bullied was to humiliate those kids during class, correcting them grammatically and when they got their facts wrong.  He never complained about being bullied.  In fact, he seemed to be cool, calm and collected about everything.

Even when Rich passed away, my son was emotional only that day.  After that, when I asked him how he was coping, he would answer matter-of-factly, “Dad is dead.  That’s not going to change and there’s nothing I can do about it.”  A grief therapist told me that she couldn’t help my son because he wouldn’t or couldn’t open up about his feelings.

As I learned more and more about Asperger’s, I realized that Rich had similar characteristics.  He was so shy and very uncomfortable in social situations.  He avoided them whenever he could.  He was highly imaginative and creative, with an amazing memory for facts and bits of trivia.  I read that autism can run in families.  Yes, I could see it.

My middle child, my older daughter, had difficulty with change right from the get-go.  She was very sensitive to noise.  She was 3 years old, riding her trike one afternoon, when our neighbor pulled up in her car.  My daughter called, “Please turn off the car, Miz Alice.  It’s too noisy!”  We laughed about it then but it wasn’t so funny when school started.

From first grade throughout her school years, she didn’t want to go.  She would cry and tantrum.  She’d say she was sick and wanted to stay home.   During the elementary years, we were in walking distance of the school.  We’d come onto school property and she’d stop, just like a donkey or mule you’d see in cartoons or comedies.  We had to do something to help her and we turned to my son’s therapist.  My daughter began to see her too and actually was prescribed liquid Prozac by the agency’s psychiatrist.  They felt she had a generalized anxiety disorder and depression.  The medication helped a little.

As she entered her teen years, though, she began to have explosive anger outbursts.  She didn’t like change, she didn’t like crowds, she didn’t like noise.  She didn’t want to take medication.  She said it killed her creativity.  She was devastated when her father died and was inconsolable.  She was so stressed, she came down with mononucleosis.  A new therapist thought she might be bipolar and prescribed medications for her but it was hard getting her to take them.

After I remarried Ted, I realized I had a lot of my own issues that needed to be handled again.  I told my therapist about my kids and she said, “Hmm.  It sounds like your daughter may have Asperger’s too.”  The agency psychiatrist there interviewed my daughter and came to me afterwards and said yes, she had Asperger’s too.

Neither of my kids wanted to seek out services that might have been available to them.  They didn’t want to be labelled.  Both of them have long since graduated and are managing very well.  My youngest child does not have Asperger’s.

There was an online personality quiz once and I took it out of curiosity.  It turns out I have Asperger characteristics too.  I thought about it.  I am introverted and feel socially uncomfortable around people I don’t know well.  I get claustrophobic in crowds so I stay on the periphery of a group, even if it’s family.  I seek out places to soothe myself when I get overwhelmed at a gathering. 

Like my daughter, I didn’t want to go to school although I did very well in my classes.  I did the same thing she did: fought going and would claim to be sick to my stomach.  My parents would have to forcibly drag me to the car and put me in it to take me to school.  That was the dreadful year I was ostracized and bullied for being different.

Interesting.

Anyway, the bottom line is there’s no stigma to autism or deafness or any other physical or emotional difference from “the norm”.  The answer is exposure and education.  If people understood about all our differences, I believe they wouldn’t be so afraid and hateful.  I’m very glad there’s an Autism Awareness month and a Deaf Awareness month and all the rest of them.  It would make living together so much more tolerable if we were all more accepting of our differences.