The Principal’s Office: Navy Yard Shooting on 9/16/13
(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 principals’ office at one time or another? Oh, the reasons they were many: usually some momentary lapse of judgment.
How polite we were in face of admonition, how contrite our faces, how humble in our place and 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 you want me to say—I’ll promise you anything!”
And yet, how many of us grew up to be good people by the time we were ready to enter adulthood, when we took on the mantle of grown-up responsibilities, when we struggled through college, when we began working and earning money, when we became decent fair kind adult human beings . . .
and hardly a thought did we give to the other kind of kid who was also sent to the principal’s office, whose resentment grew, whose frustration festered, whose anger simmered and boiled, whose need to seek revenge intensified . . .
until one day we turned on the news and watched in disbelief the latest scenes of mass murder and mayhem . . . 20 kindergarten kids last year . . . now, twelve more bodies at the Navy Yard in DC . . . someone named “Aaron Alexis” 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” . . . to the irrational decision to deliver death to his fellow human beings who never did him any harm . . . from first breath to death’s last gasp for air . . .
with only one stop in between: the principal’s office.
