Stray

 A fifth grade boy sat in the principal's office, going over his story. Yes he had, in fact, tossed White Out on the walls of a portable classroom. Twenty feet or so of new white adornment. When confronted with the next obvious question, "why?" the answer was quick.

"I did it on accident." 

The reason for his appearance in the principal's office was primarily to give him a second chance to reconfigure his story after telling me about his "accident" with correcting fluid. It was his opinion that he didn't need any further reckoning since he hadn't meant to splatter the walls of his school. "Accidents," Elvis Costello reminds us, "will happen." 

But the disbelief that I had when I first heard the explanation was echoed by our principal. She went a little deeper: "You mean to tell me that the cap to the bottle came off accidentally. And when you went tossing your arm around with an open bottle of White Out, you didn't notice the mess you were making? Across the entire front of the building?"

He maintained his position. Accident. 

Jasper Wu was a month shy of his second birthday when a bullet killed him while strapped in a car seat in his mother's car driving down Interstate 880 in Oakland. It would be the height of ridiculousness to suggest that young Jasper was the target. But it would be just as ridiculous to suggest that his death was an accident. Somebody bought the gun. And the ammunition. Someone loaded the weapon. Someone fired the gun. At Jasper? Certainly not. Accident? 

Well, the way bullets fly around in America, it would not be a surprise to hear the defense of Japser's killer stating that the nearly two-year old died "accidentally." Guns fired from moving vehicles are not freakish incidents without explanation. They are the sad reminder of the words, "stray bullet." This does not imply innocence. It confirms poor aim and horribly bad judgement. 

Our fifth grader got to spend his recess with our custodian, cleaning up the mess he made. On purpose. The flawed human being who pulled the trigger on young Jasper is still on the loose. Hopefully is "accident" is burning a hole in his soul.