On valentines day, 17 students were killed at a local high school. A school that google says is 2.7. miles from my front door. The next day, my aunt died of cancer. The day after that I was headed north for a funeral. In the following days, I read about families ripped apart, students terrified of going out, saddened by the loss of their friends, and then rising back up to fight back. Speaking out. Marching. Organizing. Getting on buses to head to our capital to demand change. To demand new laws, the repeal of old laws, the change of current laws, to ensure this cannot happen again. Today, hours ago, every local school staged a walk out, headed for Marjory Stoneman-Douglas High. Our schools supported it. Our instructors encouraged it. Our children ran with it.
On Valentines Day, my own children were going to walk home from a school that is 3.6 miles away from MSDHS. They would have walked past Coral Springs Drive on the way home. At 2:45 they were on their way. At 2:55 they stopped to see me at work (also on the way). It was hot, they asked if they could get a ride. Phone calls were made. No ride could be found. Then the police started whizzing down Sample Road. Ambulances. Firetrucks. You name it, if it had a siren, it was headed to Stoneman-Douglas. I asked them to wait. My sister texted me. Asked if they had a ride home. I had no idea what was going on, and I had asked them to wait before they started to walk. Never question your instincts. I got another phone call, from a student at the high school, telling me there was an active shooter and they were being evacuated. I made my children wait. I told our friend to be safe, secure, get out. We watched live feeds, scared for our friends, scared for our community. My sister left work to come take my boys home. We watched, and waited, while police looked for the shooter. We were 2.9 miles way. Walking would have put them closer. If I didn’t want them to walk, how did these other parents feel, with their children, their babies, inside the school? Hiding in closets. Running out back doors. Barricading doors if they couldn’t get out. Texting their parents that they love them, that they were scared, that they loved them again.
Too many children didn’t get out. One would have been too many, but seventeen. I didn’t even see a final count on injured. Are we counting mental injury? How about an entire school? An entire community? I am seeing my friends, my acquaintances, perfect strangers, who had children in the school, sharing their pain. Demanding change. Children who turned out to be heroes protecting their fellow classmates. Instructors who turned out to be heroes protecting their students. This isn’t to ignore all of the emergency staff who, just doing their every day jobs, showed up and did their thing, our every day unrecognized heroes.
I’m not crying, you are.
Our local schools, my kid’s school, Coral Springs Charter was in FULL SUPPORT of this walk out, and participated as well! My heart is seriously bursting with pride for these kids. They aren’t even mine, but this is my city, these are my people, this is our future, and it appears to be a bright one! Our children will be voting soon. One of my own will be 18 this year. They will be the change. Not to fall into clichés, but I see it happening.
I grew up in Baltimore. I spent a lot of time in DC. I love a good protest. I am in awe of these children. They will make a difference. Maybe not as fast as they would like, but it’s going to happen. If not in the next week, in the next few years, when they turn out in record numbers to make their voices heard. When they go off to school and earn their degrees and become the system, instead of being too young to make a difference to the system.
I tell my children all the time, I am so excited, so amazed, by you, and I cannot wait to see you grow up. Not so you get out, but so I can see the amazing adults you are going to turn into. Are turning into. To see what you accomplish. To see what changes you make. To see what difference one person really can make in the world, especially when you work with one person, and they work with one person, and all of you work together. It is humbling. It is inspiring.
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