America's Kids Under Siege (guns and social media)

Maybe you remember your high school days? Peer pressure was intense, no doubt about it. Something about adolescence makes everybody want to fit in, to conform, and to win the love and approval of friends and family. The desire for success leads kids to go out for sports teams, dress in the coolest fashions and learn the lingo of the peer group. Today's kids face several new enemies (1) the social network, and (2) maniacs carrying powerful weapons on to campus.

The social network poses a bigger threat for young people.

It is very unlikely that a crazed individual will enter your kid's high school with the goal of mowing down a group of innocents. Parkland, Florida proved that it does happen. Television brought us there immediately.

Parkland, Florida felt different. We all went to high school. We could relate to being in the classrooms and the thought of an intruder with an AR-15 boggles the mind. Gun lovers complained about FBI's inept performance in not following leads and they have a point. I liked the father who appeared at Trump's White House gathering and said "9/11 happened just once. We were determined that it never happen again." He spoke angrily about why previous mass shootings did not cause enough outrage to bring the school shootings situation to a halt?

We are unlikely to see any changes in gun control laws. Gun owners do not want to be denied just because a few nut cases get out of hand and mow down the citizenry. They have a point, I suppose, and worry constantly that someone "will come and take away the guns." Not sure we have any evidence of that and I wonder where the fear comes from?

The mass shooting of a campus began in Austin, Texas-- my hometown with the infamous Charles Whitman climbing to the top of the tower on the campus of The University of Texas at Austin. That was 1966--

On August 1, 1966, Charles Whitman climbed to the top of the University of Texas Tower with three rifles, two pistols, and a sawed-off shotgun. The 25-year-old architectural engineering major and ex-Marine—who had previously complained of searing headaches and depression—had already murdered his mother, Margaret, and his wife, Kathy, earlier that morning. He fired his first shots just before noon, aiming with chilling precision at pedestrians below. “The crime scene spanned the length of five city blocks . . . and covered the nerve center of what was then a relatively small, quiet college town,” noted executive editor Pamela Colloff in her 2006 oral history of the shootings. “Hundreds of students, professors, tourists, and store clerks witnessed the 96-minute killing spree as they crouched behind trees, hid under desks, took cover in stairwells, or, if they had been hit, played dead.”

At the time, there was no precedent for such a tragedy. Whitman “introduced the nation to the idea of mass murder in a public space,” wrote Colloff. By the time he was gunned down by an Austin police officer early that afternoon, he had shot 43 people, thirteen of whom died.

(Texas Monthly)

We've had many years to learn from the Whitman massacre. 

The Vietnam War lead to demonstrations-- and a social movement-- a movement based on peace, love and equality. Times were different. That was the television era. The medium has moved from television to the cellphone. Everybody looking into their own phone....

High School Memories

Class of 1967

We were the class of 1967—and those last two digits, class of ’67, linger with the graduating senior well into dotage. Even in the nursing home you’re gonna remember your date of high school graduation. Graduation does not guarantte financial gain, but without the high school degree you’re nothing. May as well get it.  is a Even famous college dropouts, genius billionaires like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, and guys you wouldn’t figure to be college dropouts, like newsman Walter Cronkite—felt compelled to graduate from high school. My pals, Bruce, my Jewish buddy, Whitey, the baseball pitcher, Bone, the skinny guy who became an airline pilot, and Ronnie, the Italian, all made it through high school. We went to colleges in places like Wisconsin and Ohio, and in my case to the intellectual hothouse at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

I was popular but shy around girls. My cheerleader heartthrob,would go off to a SUNY school, short for State University of New York. And for her I pined for her the most. But I even pined for her when we were just a few feet away from eachother, attending classes together at Peninsula High. We passed notes in class. She knew some technique for drawing a goofy cartoon figure, big hands draped over a fence. She and a few of her cheerleader girlfriends referred to themselves as “the Prudes.” That sums it up. No sex with her. So that adventure had to begin, without the cheerleader, when I got off to college.

Senior year brought some magic but mostly served as a device for letting go; letting go of parents, letting go of friends, letting go of the hometown on the south shore of Long Island. American teenagers get four years to absorb a mammoth amount of hormonal and intellectual growth. Peer pressure presses down like solid steel girders resting on a wooden palette placed squarely on your chest. Of course you don’t know that at the time. The horrid question—“What do you plan to do with your life?” kicks in midway through senior year and persists for the next few decades. The simple answer—“Going to college” takes care of the next few years.

Senior year exists in a blur. Certain images of flashing intensity appear, tell their story and move on.

Whitey shows me a diagram of a baseball stadium of the future—“You see Theo, move this section of seats and the field changes from baseball to football. Everybody has a good seat.”

What the hell was Whitey talking about? I thought a stadium was just a stadium. He had ideas for cool baseball uniforms design for major league teams. I didn’t get it, didn’t see the charm. Hell, was I wrong. Yards got built in Baltimore in 1992, a full 25 years after Whitey showed me his diagrams.. His sensed for professional sports explosion. Hell, ESPN didn’t even start until 1979. Should have invested in Whitey. And yes, he is a millionaire now and sports gear is his main portfolio.

Ronnie and I shot pool in his attic almost every night of senior year. My GPA was top ten in the high school class. Ronnie was way below but smarter in realizing that high school achievement has no correlation to future success. Ronnie retired a wealthy man, at age 45, after a career as an immigration lawyer .

Ronnie and I debated a single point during those nights shooting pool in his attic: “Who’s better—the Four Tops or Bob Dylan?”

I chose Bob Dylan, me being the son of liberal, NY Times reading parents. Ronnie went for the soul music, and the Motown sound of the Four Tops. We camped out in the attic at the top of his house. He had a pool table, and a record player, or turntable. You could play 45 rpm singles and 33 1/3 rpm LP, or long playing albums. I recall the Beach Boys playing a prominent role on the playlist. We actually had surfing on Long Island, just across the Great South Bay on the Atlantic Ocean, but we were not surf practitioners. The Beach Boys great line, “two girls for every boy,” expressed in Surf City, qualifies as the most succinct expressions of male fantasy fufillment every brought to vinyl.

We never resolved Who’s better—Four Tops/Temptations or Bob Dylan? The discussion lasted all of senior year and one thing clearly resolved itself—Ronnie shoots a better game of 8-ball pool than yours truly. I still remember Ronnie looking down his stick with only a corner of his left thumb guiding the front end of his stick, his eyes focused calmly on the shot, just before he nailed it and moved around the table in the cramped attic before lining up his next shoot. Boom, he calls “8-ball, corner pocket” and another game is over. I didn’t mind losing to Ronnie, just hated the predictability of it all.