Savage Words: It’s not normally like this

Wednesday of last week was a frightening day. I was so consumed with work, that I didn’t even know what had happened in our country just two states to the west.

I was listening to sports radio when one of the broadcasters said that with everything so negative going on in the world right now, it would be best to just continue to talk about sports.

When I heard that, clearly, I had missed something as my afternoon was filled with college football and NFL analysis on the radio. So, I switched over to a news site, only to feel the punch in the gut that everyone else was feeling.

I watched the video from Utah … watched it in horror. 

And it occurred to me as I viewed one video taken by a young person, likely a student at the University, likely very close to my daughter’s age, that when the shot rang out through my phone, and the subsequent screams pierced the air, and then the command to “run, run, run,” it wasn’t abnormal to them.

I lowered my head at that moment. I wanted to reach out to the young man shooting the video and tell him, “It’s not normally like this.”

My daughter is currently studying in South Korea. When our country was unraveling last Wednesday afternoon, she was fast asleep as it was 3 a.m. Thursday morning in Seoul. 

When she awoke, she awoke to terrible news – again – out of the United States.

She called me. It was now Wednesday night South Dakota time, about 9 on Thursday morning where she still laid in bed, consuming the news on her laptop.

I told her I was sorry. Sorry for what she, and every child in the United States of her age, has gone through. Since she started kindergarten in the fall of 2010, there have been 1,441 school shootings in our country.

As a ninth grader, she – and all of the students of her age – suffered through the COVID pandemic and was forced to wear a mask every day in school the following year.

That experience no-doubt isolated school-aged children. Some, I believe, have never come back from it and have never experienced the childhood that many of us as adults did.

Again, I told her I was sorry.

On top of the COVID mess, kids her age have known nothing but mass shootings and senseless violence, similar to what they saw on Wednesday.

I’m not nearly smart enough to know why these shootings keep happening. I feel fairly confident it’s a combination of many things. 

Listening to those kids on the video last Wednesday, the gunshot, the screams, the mandate to “run, run, run,” truly struck me. It’s something they’ve dealt with their entire lives.

When I was growing up and going to school, my biggest worry was to decide if I should have hot lunch or cold lunch. Kids today have much, much bigger concerns, like the potential of shots ringing out. 

I reassured my daughter that this isn’t normally how things are. What she’s witnessed, especially since ninth grade when COVID threw a wrench into things, isn’t normal.

This is her third stint in Seoul and she loves it there. She’s told us that she’s not entirely certain she ever wants to come back. Honestly, I guess I understand that.

But I hope she comes home someday. I’d love to play with my grandkids and watch them grow up, just as I did with her.

I’d also like to think the biggest worry those grandkids might have when they start school is hot or cold lunch. 

I hope that’s the case, but I’m not certain.

I’d like to think as Americans, we’re compassionate people. I think most of us are. 

It’s time that compassion rises to the surface again.

It probably doesn’t seem like it could be reality, but Brandon Valley students, trust me on this one: It’s not normally like this.