Good and Evil

Will is 23, and he visits me every Sunday.

Like the Walrus and the Carpenter, we talk of

“Many things, ships, and shoes, and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings and why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings.”

Last week our discussion concerned a fire drill in the facility where Will is employed.

Then our conversation abruptly changed to other precautionary drills he has experienced. Will questioned me about the lockdown drills his Father and siblings had participated in during their youth.

Our chat paused briefly as I realized how totally life has changed during the two decades of my Grandson’s young life.

Not only I, but neither Will’s Dad nor his brothers and sister, ever participated in a lockdown drill. Such routine precautions were unknown during the years our young family shared life, laughter and a few tears in the small white house with the black shutters.

I explained to Will that times were different then and

“You could not see a cloud because no cloud was in the sky.”

Today is Tuesday and I am alone this afternoon. However, I remembered last Sunday’s conversation when the news bulletin flashed across my TV screen concerning another school shooting.

Before today’s incident, there were 142 school shootings in the Umited States since the year 2013. I must assume today brings the grim total to 143. The death toll is something I have not dared to research, but, of course, with today’s incident, it is still mounting.

If there had been such a dire prediction during the years the Fabulous Four were attending school, most of the parents I knew would have said, “Impossible, not in our country.” And of course, I would have agreed wholeheartedly.

How wrong we all were. Today it still remains incomprehensible how this evil has continued to accelerate. The whole concept of assassins attacking the innocent; children, the most vulnerable of our species, with only one aim, the destruction of life, is far beyond our ability to fathom.

Tragically, we are no longer shocked when the news breaks as it now has, once again.. Both adults and children calmly accept the reality of lockdown drills as a norm in daily scholastic life. Teachers are trained in survival courses. Several have been slaughtered in school shootings protecting their young charges.

Can history be reversed? Will we ever return to the innocence and beauty of a carefree school environment?Can the memories I cherish of the innocence of evil in childhood be restored to the beautiful youngsters in today’s world?

“I doubt it, said the Carpenter, and shed a bitter tear.”