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During the last month of school, there was all this stuff in the news media about kids shooting other kids at school. Once again, some psycho loser had walked into his high school armed to the teeth and started blowing daylight through his classmates. Some editorials blamed his parents. A lot of people talked about how we need stricter gun-control laws, and about how easy it is for a kid to get a gun any time he wants one. Most people just brought up the weird philosophy the guy was throwing down the day before, called him a sociopath, and left it at that.
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By
Tyler Valdez
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Every time this kind of thing goes down, security at my school gets beefed up for a few weeks, my parents sit down and have a Serious Talk with me about personal safety, and if anyone in homeroom looks at anybody else cross-eyed we all practically hit the floor. It seems like it's an epidemic: The phrase "Going postal" is going to be replaced by "Going high school" pretty soon. If this is going to happen every six weeks throughout the school year, you'd think the President would go on TV and say, "Hey, we've got a problem here. Let's find out what's causing this so we can stop it before it happens again." But he doesn't do that, and this IS probably going to happen again. The main question, to me anyway, is why?
Some kids bring guns to school to be cool and tough, other kids bring them in to protect themselves from those kids. Maybe we should all bring guns to school, just in case someone goes nuts and starts capping people. That way, whoever was closest could just take him down. If someone has a gun in school, and you know he has a gun, you don't care if he's a psychopath or your best friend, you're scared. If they're in school with a gun, I don't care what their motive is — I'm trying to get an education. Just knowing that someone could go to their locker at any moment and pull out a .45 is enough to make me a complete nervous wreck. Without anyone firing a bullet, my day is shot.
Now, readers, you will finally understand why I can't tell you where I go to school, and why I'm not going to tell my parents about this particular column. My friend Trey, who used to live on my street, goes to a different school than me. I know he has a gun because he's shown it to me before, and he's told me that he takes it to school with him sometimes. I tell him that he's stupid. We got into a discussion about it one time, and he said, "You don't know what you're talking about. You've never brought a gun to school. You're just being like everyone says you're supposed to be." I had to agree. You can't understand a gun-toting teenager until you've walked a mile in his Air Jordans, right?
That's why, on the Friday morning before the last week of school, I put my baggiest sweater on over my L.E.I. flares and stuck Trey's gun, unloaded, into my waistband. I carried it around with me all day.
My first class was Chemistry. I remember thinking, "I don't even like Chemistry, and I've got a gun." It was a weird feeling. For once in my life I felt like I was completely in control of the situation. Nobody could make me feel bad about anything, because I had this secret power over them. I felt like Michelle Yeoh. Like nobody could mess with me.
By lunchtime I was getting wigged, though. I started to seriously regret this experiment. But I couldn't get rid of the gun. I couldn't throw it away, or hide it, or anything. I had to carry it around with me for the rest of the day, even though I thought for sure someone would notice. I thought people were staring at me. I was sure that someone could tell I was strapped by the way I was walking and sitting. Right before lunch I put the gun in my book bag. I wanted to tell someone I had it, but I couldn't. When I was with my two best friends, I wanted to blurt it out so badly that I had a gun on me that I had to bite my tongue. I thought about leaving it in my locker, but that's where guns always get found, by those gun-sniffing dogs or whatever. Worse than that, I started feeling this weird compulsion to pull the gun out and show it off.
By the end of the day I felt OK again. Not as great as I had felt in the morning, but I felt a sense of relief, like I had gotten away with something big. I didn't tell my friends at the time, but I told them that weekend. They couldn't believe it.
What did I learn from going to school strapped? That I wish I hadn't. When I had the gun on me, that's all I could think about. I couldn't pay attention to what we were studying, I couldn't pay attention to what my friends were saying, I don't even remember eating lunch. Everything was about the gun. I kept thinking, "This is stupid. It could never help anybody to do this. What am I going to do, shoot somebody because they bumped me in the hall on purpose?" What kind of level of thinking is that? It's moronic. Why would anyone want this? It's not a solution to anything. It makes you less than what you are. It makes you less than human.
The question is, are you a psycho before you bring the gun to school, or does the way you feel once you get there with the gun make you crazy? Maybe you bring the gun to school for protection or to show you could mess someone up if you wanted to, but once you get there you think, "Hey, I've got a gun! Eat lead, Mr. Harris, I'm not going to make a duck decoy for shop class!" I'm not sure what the difference is between the kid who brings a gun to school and uses it and one who brings a gun to school and realizes how stupid that is, but whatever it is, I hope we find out soon.
This is the third issue of Tyler's Mad Crib. Catch up on what you missed in Tyler's archive.
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