Bullying/Free Speech

***I have to get this off my chest. I have avoided the myriad threads in Facebook about the tragedy that took place in Richmond last week as I didn't want to deal with the inevitable silliness that would follow my posting my opinion. The boy's mother is the one who called in the tip, and the police where there when he arrived. She no doubt saved several lives, the boy in question had two firearms and explosives in his possession. He obviously was planning to do a lot of harm. Since then, however, there has been an overabundance of weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. Of course it's tragic and awful, you would have to be nuts to think otherwise. BUT, if the Dennis middle schoolers did not feel like victims before, they certainly do now. Counselors, days out of school, free T-shirts, free day at the local recreational complex, endless worrying about their feelings...not terrible things, but come on. So many are wailing about bullying and how it has to stop and oh, what are we gonna do about bullying...blah blah blah. As if kids bullying each other is something new. Now the schools want them to put an app on their phones and report bullying. Great. Now if one kid teases another, they can be reported and branded a bully and perhaps ostracized themselves. Great plan. I have always been overweight, I was teased mercilessly all through my school years. We lived on a farm, my dad hunted, and I had easy access to guns and ammunition. Not once did I think about taking those guns and shooting up my school.  Seems to me we need to teach our kids to handle it when they're teased, not coddle them and whine about how it's just so awful and their poor little self esteem might be damaged...on and on ad nauseum. We are so quick to blame anything, anyone other than the perpetrator - why, he couldn't possibly be responsible for his actions, right? Must be something we did, we have to fix it.  As for my reference to free speech in the title to this entry, do not kids have that right also? Or is it only speech overprotective parents approve of? Of course I agree with the consensus that we need to be kinder to each other and teach our kids to be kind also, but the fact remains kids are going to tease each other. Teach your kid to handle it, not shrink away and feel sorry for him/herself. We're raising a generation of pansies who don't know how to handle anything negative.

Whew. Boy I feel better.  :-)

***So is everyone going nuts? We've had to scale back quite a bit this year since I lost so much transcription business when my biggest client changed their EMR platform. That was a big hit, plus starting the store really drained our savings. That's okay, though, we went overboard last year anyway. I'm happy to say I'm about done and everything is paid for. Just wish it was wrapped.  :-)  I really dislike that job and I'm no good at it. Thank goodness Mark likes to do it and is willing.

***


***

“One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas Day. Don’t clean it up too quickly.” ―Andy Rooney