In one of the bloodiest days in school history, 17 children were gunned down in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, 2018. The weapon used was an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, known as "America's gun" and preferred by . . . mass murderers.
Fuck the "thoughts and prayers." Fuck the "now is not the time to talk about gun control." Fuck the NRA. And fuck every politician that accepts money from them.
Now that it's clear how I feel about this, let me tell you about two circumstances I found myself in on two Wednesdays a week apart. Last Wednesday, I was driving my houseguest to the West Palm Beach airport for her flight home. It was around 1:00 in the afternoon. A few miles in, we came upon an accident that had traffic stopped in the northbound lane. We learned later that the accident was a "rollover," a casualty of the traffic situation a few miles further north. A couple of hours earlier, a crazed 22-year-old, after killing his girlfriend and possibly two or three other people, drove his car south in the northbound lane, causing three accidents before police were able to stop him. The murderer was permanently stopped by a policeman's bullet.
Although we had no knowledge of the murder investigation up the road, we were very close to the scene of the rollover accident, and I contemplated how, had we left perhaps five minutes earlier, we might have been victims in this tragedy. These realizations are always unsettling.
And yesterday, at 11:06 a.m., I pulled up to the Marriott at Coral Springs to pick up an old friend to spend an afternoon on the beach with me. Cheryl and I go back over four decades when we became colleagues in the English Department at a brand new high school in New Jersey. We were delighted to have the chance to get together again. After a few perfect hours on the beach, we came back to my place to chat it up some more before Cheryl's husband came to pick her up. Pretty soon, both our phones began to ring. Cheryl's husband called with the news of the shooting, explaining that he was unable to navigate the snarled traffic to come and get Cheryl. The students who were evacuated from the site of the school shooting had been taken to the Marriott, where their parents could come and get them. My daughter, who had spent a year teaching in Coral Springs and knew a couple of students who'd transferred to the high school where the shooting took place, called me, hoping I might know more about the victims, as she was worried about the students she knew. Two of them had assured her they were okay, but she had not heard back from the others.
Once again, I thought about the timing. What if I had driven Cheryl back to the Marriott? Leaving the beach just an hour earlier than we did would have put us right in the vicinity of the shootings. I am not suggesting that I dodged a bullet here (although it sort of feels like I did, literally and figuratively), but in thinking about these two acts of violence that have taken place in the last week and my proximity to them, I can't help but consider the old axiom, "There but for fortune go you or I . . ."
On Valentine's Day one year ago, I wrote about Tim Buckley's heartbreaking song, "Valentine Melody." Buckley was nineteen (the same age as the shooter) in 1966 when he wrote the song. Rereading the lyrics today, I was stunned to realize their relevance to this happenstance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Today the coin is in the air
And we are here and there
And where and when have caught us in
The web of violence
I pray to all the world as one
That day will bring the sun
In the scarlet light of Valentine's
Our paper hearts are blind
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