If you want to understand what I do, read Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

How gun violence permeates everything

I read this book that you should read: Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds.

It is a quick read, written in verse. It just keeps coming at you. I couldn’t put it down.

Mild spoilers ahead, but nothing you wouldn’t find out in the first three pages or so.

The book shows us life through the eyes of a boy whose older brother was just shot and killed.

He introduces us to The Rules, and they aren’t The Rules of how to get a man to marry you.

The Rules are:

1. No crying.

2. No snitching.

3. Get revenge.

These rules permeate everything I live with every day.

The kids live in a low trust society, even if a high trust society is not far away from them. Gun violence touches everyone. So many sweet kids wear necklaces with a loved one’s picture framed by angel wings. That means the person pictured was killed.

“No snitching” is a huge part of the culture. Kids won’t say who did a bad thing. Sometimes a whole group will get punished, but most of the time, the amazingly good deans and other culture staff can figure out who did what or get a kid to tell. I’m sure they know that they are standing between these kids and jail or death.

When gun violence claims the life of a young person, how can the survivors ever be whole again?

I think that Jason Reynolds’ book shows the depth of the pain, what it can drive people to, and how the cycle just keeps repeating.

When some of my liberal friends express a willingness to forgive all violence and blame it on “the system” or “systemic racism” or some such, I often say, “I think you’d feel differently if I got shot.” Or knifed to death or what have you.

It is different when it happens to you, to your family member, to your friend or your neighbor or your coworker.

I often cover for teachers who are at funerals. When they come back, you don’t get the sense that the funeral was for a very elderly relative who died peacefully in their sleep.

At another school, I covered for a teacher whose sister was murdered. The teacher was in her early thirties, the sister was her younger one.

How do you keep going? And how do you come in and face kids who are already showing a tendency to resort to violence?

The thing I love most about my school is that the violence is really kept at bay. Other schools have fights, even if they are not frequent and even if the pre-fight gets broken up. Mine really doesn’t. If I call the Dean about a pre-fight, a play fight, or heaven forbid someone threatening something scary, the Deans are on it. No question that they back me up.

Of everyone, I think I love the Deans the most. Sure I love the other teachers and the kids, and all the AP’s and the Marvelous Mr. M, but I love the Deans the most. And Charlotte.

Charlotte Tarantula is getting ready for supper. She will eat on Thursday. She’s up on the side of her terrarium looking beautiful. As it turns out, she is a Pinktoe Tarantula, not a rosehair. She really does have pink toes!!! Like a tarantula with ballet slippers on!

(Closest I could find without paying for ChatGPT’s image generator, which I will not be doing. I clearly need this pair of shoes.)

To understand the kids, you have to interpret everything they do through the lens of gun violence. Lives can be taken and turned upside down in a flash. There is no security. The future is far from guaranteed, so there is a great deal of pressure to live in the present, even at the cost of future possibilities.

Everything can happen so quickly for these kids that their lives are unstable even in the midst of parents trying to do everything they can to give their kids stability. That’s one reason why I have to keep showing up every day. Yes, I need the money. Yes, I like the job a lot. But the kids need to see Sticker Lady. Those stickers are a tiny piece of stability in an ocean of danger.

Even with the horror that surrounds them, the kids are joyful. We do that on purpose. Music lights up the hallways in the morning. There are clubs and fun events and sports and cheerleaders. Girls who may have lost their fathers, uncles, grandfathers, even brothers, can still jump and scream with the best of them.

In some ways it shows that life will not be defeated. I just wish life didn’t have to fight so hard.

That song from the nineties by Maroon 5 that goes

I don’t mind spending every day

Out on your corner in the pouring rain…

Just popped into my head. Don’t really know why.