Talking with our families about school shootings is painful, but necessary
Our son told me his strategy for getting to safety. I hate that worst-case scenario planning is his reality.
Wednesday dinnertime at the manse is always catch-as-catch-can, given the back-to-back Handbell Choir rehearsals involving the rest of my family. I was not surprised last week to get a text from my wife, who passed our son in the rehearsal room, asking if I would take the starving 14-year-old out “for something fun to eat.”
In the car, we talked about the day, and he noted that there had been another school shooting. I had just been reading about the student who died engaging one of the shooters in Colorado, and earlier in the day his mom and I had talked about the response being taught in some schools, to “Run Hide Fight.” As we stood waiting for our order in the short-handed Dairy Queen, I thought, as I often do now, how vulnerable we all are.
Over his six-piece chicken strip basket, our son told me the strategy he had developed with his best friend, based on an elaborately imagined scenario taking place in their school cafeteria. These two eighth-graders have chosen the closest exit, the surest path out of the building, their destination to be a neighborhood close by where they could call for help.
