A Case of the Mondays

Last week, the morning after the shootings at yet another Colorado high school, the folks on the radio read the recap of the story on the news and then segued into the Boomtown Rats' "I Don't Like Mondays." For those of you unfamiliar with the tune, here's an excerpt:
"and the playing stopped in the playground now
she wants to play with her toys a while
and school's out early and soon we'll be learning
the lesson today is how to die"
Written by Sir Bob "Feed The World" Geldof, it was inspired by actual events. On 29 January 1979, 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer opened fire on children arriving at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego from her house across the street, killing two men and wounding eight students and a police officer. Principal Burton Wragg was attempting to rescue children in the line of fire when he was shot and killed, and custodian Mike Suchar was slain attempting to aid Wragg. Spencer used a rifle her father had given her as a gift. As to what impelled her into this form of murderous madness, she told a reporter,''I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day.''
In 1979, I confess I gnawed on this bit of arcane mental illness and reveled briefly in the extreme oddness of it. A quarter century later, I find myself in the front of a classroom wondering when it became so easy to kill. Today, a milk-truck driver carrying three guns and a childhood grudge stormed a one-room Amish schoolhouse, sent the boys and adults outside, barricaded the doors with two-by-fours, and then opened fire on a dozen girls, killing three people before committing suicide. Add this to an attack last week at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colorado, where a man singled out several girls as hostages in a school classroom and then killed one of them and himself. Authorities said the man in Colorado sexually molested the girls.
If you really have a death wish, why not strap some egg cartons to your chest with duct tape and run screaming through the security checkpoint at your local airport shouting, "Death to America! I've got a bomb!" Better yet, why not drop a four-slice toaster into your next bath? I have a hard time imagining that this recent wave of shootings doesn't begin and end with the voracious beast that is twenty-four hour network media news. Or maybe it's "Grand Theft Auto." Or perhaps Marilyn Manson. Or maybe there is a silicon chip in our heads that gets switched to overload.
Whatever the source, we're left with more aftermath. Broken glass and shattered minds - picking up the pieces and wincing in anticipation of the next one. The first things I remember learning in teacher school were Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The second one, right after things like food, water and air, was safety. As new teachers, we were asked to ensure that our classrooms were safe places where learning could take place. Not today. Not this Monday.
Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays.
I want to shoot
The whole day down.