How Fragile a Flower, Life Is

April showers bring May flowers, so they say. I certainly hope so. We're mere days from the onset of May and I'm really sick of the showers. I try to keep some perspective by reminding myself of Noah. Currently it's 68 degrees under rainy skies in Streeterville. I long for those flowers, those flowers whose life spans are brief, but beautiful in the ever-changing seasons.

Today was one more Monday at the Outpost in Back of the Yards. Lately the gang activity at the school has been getting out of hand. It's an indication of what is currently going on the neighborhood at large. There have been numerous gang-related shootings. If you don't keep up on the news over the weekend, you come to work on Monday morning and get blindsided by the general tenor of the student population when they arrive. Generally if there has been a shooting, someone knows the person who was shot. Someone knows the person who did the shooting. It turns into fights in the hallway, and provides fodder for the next violent event in the streets of the neighborhood after school lets out.

Today one of my students came to class about 5 minutes late, as usual. He signed in on the tardy sheet, and sat down with as little commotion as possible. When I walked back to his seat and handed him an assignment, he whispered very quietly, "Did you hear about Zachary?" I confessed that I hadn't, but his general tone suggested to me that something serious had occurred. I asked him what happened, and he replied, "He was shot Saturday. He's dead." The whole exchange was entirely free of emotion and unnecessary nonsense. Just matter of fact. "Zachary was shot Saturday. He's dead."

It was the middle of a class and I didn't want to create a big stir. I got as much info as I could without alerting the entire class, and went on about the business of running a history class. The young man in question went about the business of completing his history assignment, and we both moved on. Bells rang. Classes changed. Zachary was still dead.

I passed this information along to my fellow history teacher across the hall and he was stunned. He reminisced a bit. "Zachary never was the kind of kid who created any trouble in my class. I knew he hung out with a few bad kids, but....." Later, at the end of the day, he told me that he had searched out the incident involving Zachary and found it in the Chicago Tribune. Apparently Zach was the victim of a drive-by shooting. A car pulled up and shot. Zach tried to get away. The guy jumped out of the car, ran up to Zach and shot him 2 or 3 more times, jumped back in the car, and rode away. Zach died in a pool of blood on the sidewalk, mere blocks from the Outpost where he went to high school. Classic gang-related bullshit violence. "I wear black and red. You wear another set of colors. You gotta die M****r F****r!"

You read about this kind of thing in the papers every day in large cities. This was no different than any of those other stories you read about, except for one thing. This kid was a student of mine. He was a friend of some of my current students. It's entirely possible that I know the kid who did the shooting. It was senseless, and another life was snuffed out entirely too soon.

How did we arrive here? How did it come to pass that teenaged boys can ride around in cars with Glock 9mm pistols, shooting at one another? How can it come to be in an advanced society that some portions of that society are so alienated and lacking in hope that they live lives of violence, shooting each other in the streets, like some perverse version of Shootout at the OK Corral? How did it come to pass that mothers must mourn their babies who die in the streets at age 16,17, 18? Why can we not put an end to the bullshit?

There are no easy answers. For myself, I try every day to reach a set group of kids, one at a time. Some you reach. Some are destined to be a shooter or the shot. Some are destined for lockup. A few will survive and get beyond it all. I try, and have tried for the last 15 years to help as many as possible to survive and get beyond it all. For those who don't make it, well...Zach, we knew you well. We mourn for you.