The World Didn't End

The world didn't end.  Not for all of us.  There's always a few that don't quite make it to the coming year.  It seems like the bodies tend to pile up at the end of a year.

Sandy Hook alone was a pretty devastating toll on the nation and the loved ones left to mourn the loss of those 27 people.  That was a big deal.  I can't even begin to apologize or try to make things better for those families.  I wouldn't know where to start.  It's hard for me to comfort people having a bad day, where do you start making someone feel better when they just lost a kid.  Can you imagine? 

You fall in love.  You get married.  Have a kid.  The kid starts walking.  Then talking.  He looks like you but with your wife's eyes and hair.  He develops a personality.  The kid is funny and smart.  He's cooler than you ever were at his age.  He hates green beans.  They have a weird texture.  He loves oatmeal raisin cookies with a juice box.  He goes ape-y for that shit.  He's smart but he could be smarter.  You send him to school.  His teachers are cool and seem to know what they're doing.  The one down the hall has really pretty blue eyes.  She seems nice.

Then you go to work one day and you hear the news.  That kid you spent 7 years of your life preparing for and raising and worrying about and loving is in danger of being shot.  What if he's shot already?  Is he okay?  Can the cops get there and take care of this before anything happens to him?  can I get there and save my kid before he gets hurt?  What if he's hurt and all he wants is me?

Later you find out he was one of the first ones shot.  It wasn't a kill shot just some spray of bullets.  It took maybe ten minutes and he lay there bleeding and crying and asking for his parents along with a dozen other kids in that same room.  It's a tragedy.

Makes me sad.  I cried a little bit writing that.  I didn't want to but that's where I am with Sandy Hook.  That's how I feel after two weeks or so and I don't know a single person that died.  That's real and not a thing to say "aw" about.  It's about where I think most of us should be.

Then Obama comes on TV and gives a speech.  I didn't watch it because it wasn't for me.  There's nothing he could've said for me to change a thing.  That speech was for that town and those parents.  It was him saying this sucks and we as a nation are really sorry you had this shitty, shitty situation come down on you.

He interrupts football to say this and the next day I read an article quoting all the assholes from twitter that had a problem with him interrupting the game for this speech.  They called him a nigger. ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/17/take-that-nigger-off-tv-racist-tweets-obama_n_2317185.html )

Fuck you, if you think this isn't a tragedy or that missing 15 minutes of football is worth disrespecting the memory of those people.  Don't ruin a humane moment in which a representative of the country, no matter your feeling about him, tries to collectively talk a town out of jumping from a window ledge using sympathy.  He was trying to say what needed to be said by all of us.  We feel for you.  We give a damn, even if just a tiny one.  What did you heartless assholes want him to do?  Give a speech that only the handful in attendance would ever know happened?  Let the rest of the country think it isn't that important to us?  Maybe he should've gone out there and told them to stop crying about their loss because people die every day?

Maybe he is politicizing this to get tough on guns.  Maybe he won't stop us from going over that fiscal cliff.  Maybe he'll be the death of us all.  At this particular moment, I don't give a crap about that.  What I do care about is that there is something wrong with us as a country, possibly as a planet, when we can't respect a loss of life for more than two minutes.  Why can't we stop worrying about political parties or skin color or any of that superficial garbage and just reach out emotionally for a bit.

If you have it in you to be kind and be patient and not be a total dick all the time, great.  We all have bad days, we all slip up, we tend to be focused on "I" from time to time.  It happens don't hang yourself about it.  But when something like this happens, when you are called upon to find a speck of human decency you better give it some effort and find a scrap of it.  In this world of MyFaceBook and i-own-a-pod and YouWatchMeTube, it's hard not to be self absorbed but at least be honest with yourself as to when you are.  I feel more and more our society pushes us towards being that way.  It's gotta be the wrong direction.   

If the world had ended on the 21st we would be better off.  Instead of some quick meteor destroying us in a flash and bang, we'll get the next 3,000 years or so to slowly poison, kill, and maim the humanity out of ourselves until there's a few huddled groups left starving and looking to betray each other to find their next meal hidden in the flesh of former friends.  Maybe by then we'll have any easier time of it with our "fuck those guys" attitude.

Hope you had a Merry Christmas.  Sorry about the swearing.