abandoned random
Meredith Kay (h_weatherfield@hotmail.com)
Mon, 26 Apr 1999 16:24:29 -0700 (PDT)
My sister once told me that my thoughts are so "piecey" that I really
don't have a train -- I must have jumped it as soon as I got on. She
calls what I have "abandoned random": a very cutesy name (however
poetic) for a very serious (or not so serious) condition, I suppose.
As a high school student, I find the incident at Columbine
particularly disturbing. (Disturbing really isn't the correct word
choice, but as far as I can tell, the least graphic.) I went to
sleep Tuesday night in one world only to wake up Wednesday morning in
another. In fact, I fell asleep to the 11 o'clock news -- my first
chance to hear the whole story -- thinking I was dreaming the whole
thing. I woke up the next morning to find that I hadn't. My
nightmare was truly a reality.
This tragedy opened up a whole new view of the world I live in.
While sitting at my lunch table the other day, I was reading the
paper -- I'm doing a video journalism bit on the events at Columbine
for our high school's TV show, so I was reading up on what I already
knew. Two teenage girls came by, began to read over my shoulder, and
I SWEAR to you, they had no clue. Neither of them even knew what the
two "gunmen" (the news calls them gunmen, I call them "boys") looked
like, let alone their names and how many were killed or injured. I
would assume they didn't even know what state it happened in. (I
wouldn't put it past these two 16-year olds to know what day it was,
actually.) But the thing that gets me is, this is the nation's
future? These two girls are representing a LARGE portion of
America's youth -- CLUELESS youth.
Must all teenagers live in their own little world? Or is there a way
they can learn to open their minds and their hearts to the world
around them?
-- Meredith Kay
_______________________________________________________________
Get Free Email and Do More On The Web. Visit http://www.msn.com