The Principal’s Office
(this reflection is not intended for those who were never sent there!)
Odd, isn’t it, how many of us boys were sent to the principal’s office at one time or another? Oh, the reasons they were many: some small, some momentary lapse of judgment. How polite we were in face of admonition, how contrite our faces, how humble in our place, and (later) how frightened in our worries lest our parents discover our transgression!
“A phone call home, you say? Oh no sir please not that! I promise to be good! I promise you whatever I’m supposed to say—I promise you anything!”
And yet how many of us grew up to be good people when we took on the mantle of responsibility, when we struggled through college, when we began working for our pay, when we became fair, kind, adult human beings . . . and hardly a thought did we give to the other kind of kid also sent to the principal’s office, whose resentment grew, whose frustration festered, whose anger seethed, whose need to seek revenge intensified . . .
until one day we turn on the news and watch in disbelief the latest scene of mass murder and mayhem . . . 20 kindergarten kids last year . . . now, twelve more bodies at the Navy Yard in DC . . . someone named Aaron Alexis “already dead” is the likely culprit.
It’s hard to imagine the journey this boy this man must have traversed from that first breath of life to the moment when (with mighty arsenal in hand) he opened fire delivering fiery death everywhere . . . from first breath of life “to the principal’s office” . . .
and then one day he inexplicably decides to deliver death to his fellow human beings who never did him any harm (in the ordinary sense) . . . from first breath of life to the finality of death . . .
with only one stop in between: the principal’s office.
