Just Another School Shooting

I heard the reports that there was a gunman on an elementary school campus in Connecticut Friday morning around 8:30, right when I got into work to start Twittering and Facebooking for my clients. At that time the Tweets weren't saying there were any deaths, so I kept scrolling, looking for something relevant to post or retweet.

Had I clicked on any of the links in those tweets I might have learned far earlier what happened. It wasn't until after 11am Pacific time when a coworker asked  if we'd heard about the 27 dead in the school shooting.

Wait... what?

Twenty seven. Dead. Most of them children.

Throughout the day I paid close attention to Twitter, waiting to see the latest as the story unfolded. My office was quiet for a long time - like the rest of the country we were shocked, horrified and saddened that such a thing would happen to 6 and 7 year old kids. The shooter was barely an adult himself at just 20. Why would he target classrooms of little kids?

There was the range of typical emotions I felt on Friday (anger, frustration, sadness, shock), but one I did not feel was surprise. When I saw that first tweet my thought was just another school shooting. I hoped no one was injured, and assumed that if anyone was it would be just 1 or 2 people, like what had happened just two goddamned days earlier in Oregon. The point was this had happened so many times just in the last 6 months that I very nearly brushed it off completely. It seems like there's always someone with a gun  going crazy and not caring if they die. For a long time, Columbine was a word everyone knew. Then so was Virginia Tech. These places were where innocent kids (and young adults) died because a crazy classmate wanted to inflict as much pain and suffering as possible. Now I'm honestly having a hard time remembering the names of the schools and towns where massacres took place over the last two years. This year was that place in Arizona where the state representative was shot in the head but survived, there was the midnight movie theatre shooting in Aurora, Colorado, a few people killed in a mall in Oregon, and now there's Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut, a place I'm sure to forget after the next few mass shootings. 

There's not enough time in between shootings now to really commemorate each location. We all knew Columbine and Virginia Tech like we knew 9/11. There are kids alive right now who know nothing of what it was like before we killed each other on a regular basis and endured being killed by extremists. Taking off their shoes, being touched by strangers in an airport security line and being scanned for explosives is just how we fly planes now. I remember when the building in Oklahoma City was bombed: that was heavy news for a good week that caused my mom to cry for days. I remember feeling for the kids in that building, there only because one company provided daycare for its employees, and wondering why that man would do such a thing.  Now a school shooting (as horrible as an elementary school massacre is) is just one more tragedy.*

A second thought: there was a lot of misinformation reported on Friday. Other than me thinking no one had died, it was reported that the shooter was targeting his mother, a teacher at Sandy Hook, and her classroom. It was also reported that the shooter's dad's body was found at his house later in the afternoon. It was also reported that there were two shooters, brothers, and one had escaped to the woods nearby. All of these things (and possibly more things) are false. There was one shooter, and his father is still alive. His mother, not a teacher at that school, was found shot to death in her bed in the home she shared with the shooter (it was her guns the shooter stole and used). The shooter acted entirely alone, and his brother was unfairly arrested and questioned. The Huffington Post also had to edit a report that "misidentified" a Facebook profile as that of the shooter (major oops).

What's with journalists? Are they so excited to be the first to report something that they won't check to make sure it's correct? Does accuracy not matter anymore? Just because one cop or paramedic makes a remark or comments on something does not mean it's true. Plus, the reporters were going around to the surviving 7 year olds and asking them what they heard, what they felt, and how they got out alive. Fucking 7 year old little kids are being interviewed and asked what it was like to survive one of the worst school shootings in the country's history. I wonder how that's going to make them feel when they're old enough to understand what happened. Reporters should have laid off the kids. Talk to adults in the school, or parents after they found out their kids were safe... but leave the traumatized kids alone.

*Aside: Up until the first week of November of this year the there was a lot of debate between the presidential candidates, their VPs, and various other congress members and senators about who will keep us safer from extremists who hate our way of life and want Americans dead. Maybe it's time to focus less on outside forces and more on those within our ranks who want us dead (or at least some of us). 

Road Trip Part 2: Oregon

Part 1 of our road trip, the California Coast, is here.

Weird state.

Oregon! Finally! The boyfriend was snoozing and asked me to wake him when we were close, but by the time I realized we were on the border we had passed it, so I turned around to get a photo. Other than being full of stretches of beach interspersed with stretches of redwood and sequoia forest, the drive along the Oregon coast was uneventful.

But very scenic.

There were a few really old and beautiful bridges that we drove on, each with a date later than the bridge before it, showing a very real timeline of the history of Oregon. And we passed lots of lakes and rivers. One of which (we saw as we passed over one such bridge) we could see emptying into the ocean. Weren't able to get a picture but we could see exactly where they met by the colors and mineral differences. So cool.

Almost like a postcard.

We drove up the Oregon coast for a couple of hours and then when we left we drove East for almost an hour, and saw lots and lots of lakes, rivers and forests. No wonder people there are so into outdoor activities: there's just a lot to do. We didn't get a picture of them, but the area we were staying in is known for the dunes where people ride quads. Some of the dunes were the size of small mountains. My cousin asked if we could stay after the wedding to hang out and ride quads and I'd said yes before accepting my job, and once I was there and saw how much fun it looked like I was sad we had to get back so quickly.

 This was fun!

All of the roads were windy and slowed us down. It was a lot of fun driving up there, though, especially in a new car that could corner pretty well.  There were stretches like this, of open road where you could see the ocean off to the left, and stretches going through shadowy forest. Very beautiful.

That part of Oregon, the part right off the 101, is all about camping and activities in nature. After a few more hours of driving we got to Winchester Bay, the area my cousin was getting married, and 4 miles after that was Reedsport, where our hotel was (which is a whole 'nother story, totally worth reading if you ever plan on staying in a hotel). Winchester Bay had 1 exit off the 101, making it easy to miss if you weren't paying attention.

Oregon coast. Less beachy than California, but just as beautiful.

We left before 7am Sunday morning after the wedding, when almost no one was on the road. I filled up at a gas station before we left... well, I went to two gas stations that looked open before finding one that was. And when I got out of my car to pump the attendant was standing right next to my car expectantly. He asked what I wanted and I said I was just going to fill up. I was a little creeped out. He said he'd do it and before I could protest he said he had to because it was state law. He probably noticed my California license plate, or my completely dumbfounded expression, because he explained that New Jersey and Oregon had this law and were the only states to outlaw pumping your own gas. So, I stood there awkwardly while someone else put gas in my car. A truck pulled up at another pump and the driver stayed put, waiting for the attendant. So this really was a thing. So weird. A few hours later I got out of my car again and pumped my own gas. Like a normal person.

We got gas in Weed, CA

The drive back was a bit rough and not something the boyfriend and I are planning to do again. Three hours of Oregon and alllllllll of California. Like, everything except for about 20 miles. Through Bay Area traffic, grapevine traffic, lane closures, and goddamn LA traffic for almost 17 hours. The plan was to get a burrito as soon as we arrived in San Diego but that didn't happen until midnight and I'd been trying to sleep for several hours. If we'd been able to break that drive up into two days it'd have been a thousand times better, but I had a job to get back to.

But it was a fantastic experience and a few great and not-so-great stories came out of it. And the boyfriend and I finally went on a trip together, finally stayed in a hotel together, finally went to a wedding together, finally spent a whole week together. 10/10, would do it again.