There's One More Kid

"...that will never go to school

Never get to fall in love,
never get to be cool."

- Neil Young, Rockin' In The Free World

It has happened for a second time. To be honest, I don't actually know if there have been other occurrences, but this was the most recent: About a week ago, a kid who had been in my class was killed by a gun. When you start to toss the numbers around: fourteen years of teaching, hundreds of kids each year, it becomes less intimidating. And I teach in Oakland, where there were one hundred and ten homicides last year. Extrapolating, that would sit somewhere in the one thousand four hundred range for my teaching tenure. Many of those homicide victims were between the ages of fifteen and thirty. I suppose I shouldn't be all that surprised by the coincidence.

There was a loaded gun and two kids involved in this one. One was thirteen. The other was fifteen. They were brothers. The fifteen year old was the one who was shot. Accidental or on purpose, murder or suicide, it may never be known. Doesn't matter. Dead kid. Was a student of mine. Somebody's son. Somebody's brother.

Years ago, it was another boy who made the mistake of being in front of a nightclub in San Francisco late one night. More to the point, he was in front of a gun late one night in San Francisco. He too never saw his sixteenth birthday. I knew him too. I gave him the same lecture I give to any kid who will listen to me about "good choices and bad choices." The same lecture I have given to my son. When I see second and third graders chasing each other around the play structure, pointing fingers and shouting, "Pow, you're dead," it makes me flinch. When they get to fourth or fifth grade and they make the sounds of a shotgun being racked, or start bragging about the AK they saw, I tell them the story of the boy I had in my class who didn't ever get his driver's license or go to his senior prom. They stare at me for a while, and a few of them start to put it together. Mister Caven has a hard time watching kids play with guns. I know that I won't stop them. Cops and Robbers and Cowboys and Indians and Halo are far too exciting to simply give up. Now I have a new story to tell, and I hope more kids listen.