MY SON GOT SUSPENDED FOR THREATENING TO BRING FIREARMS TO SCHOOL, BUT I UNDERSTAND WHY HE DID IT

As parents we know the fear of sending our kids off to school every day, never sure if they will come home safe; that bloodcurdling chill every time we hear about another school shooting.

But for the first time, I got a glimpse of the other side – the mind of a kid who makes a threat like that. And I know now that gun control is not the answer to this problem.

It’s HATE CONTROL.

 

Am I defending kids who make threats like that, including my son? NO. Am I rationalizing why people commit these heinous crimes? NO.

If you think that, then stop reading this right now. You obviously are here to attack me, and I’m not interested in what your small mind produces when you read this. So LEAVE.

 

What I am saying is, I understand why some kids might make threats like that. If you’re interested in my insight, please keep reading.

 

Although I write candidly and without a filter, many topics, particularly about my family, feel as though they are a violation of privacy and I won’t expose them.

It is with my son’s full permission that I write that he has been suffering tremendously with a debilitating chronic illness for the last four years. This story is not about that; just understand that he has been in and out of hospitals for years, undergone serious surgeries, and has handled it with a grace and a determination that I absolutely KNOW I would not be able to muster.

 

Until this year. At fifteen, he is a gnarly teenager, with all the unpleasant hormonal changes that come with his age.

And his illness has left him isolated, despondent and many days, devoid of hope.

My son, despite all the odds against him, gained entry into one of the most competitive high school programs in our county. It’s in a town half an hour away from where we used to live, which, in the suburbs, might as well be in another country.

He began high school knowing no one, but joined Marching Band and made a couple of friends.

 

And then, as it does, his illness took a turn for the worse, and he has been unable to attend school since December. For those of you not familiar with this, he is then put on “home instruction”: teachers come to the house weekly. I’m grateful that this option exists but for a teenage boy at a new school with barely any friends, it’s a death sentence.

He’s had months of isolation. He has no interaction with his peers. He sees therapists (yes, plural) to help him navigate his life though chronic illness. And although I do my best to supervise him, sometimes my best just isn’t good enough.

I have not been monitoring his online activity as diligently as I should have been. He mainly plays Xbox online and watches YouTube, but he also participates in group chats via Discord, and frankly, I have no idea what he says in these groups.

 

My son has been chatting in one group with his two friends, but there are a couple of other kids in the group who harass him about being Jewish.

My son said nothing to me. He says nothing because he doesn’t view this as “bullying.” To him, it’s part of life, and he shrugs it off.
Just let that sink in a minute.

 

In the area of New Jersey where I live, people have money instead of empathy. They have material things instead of intelligence. I’ve had the head of the PTO tell me to “watch that woman with the cash box” at a bake sale –because she was black. I’ve had people tell me which schools to avoid, because my son would be “going to school with Mexicans.”

His first best friend in elementary school was with him daily – until he came to our house for Hanukkah. After watching my son and his father don yarmulkes to light the menorah, he never spoke to my son again.

After years of listening to Christmas stories at his elementary school holiday parties, my kid begged me one year to be the class reader. I was told that the Hanukkah story we picked out was not appropriate, and to pick something “seasonal.”

 

So anti-Semitism just rolls off my kid’s back.

Usually.

 

A month ago, he was in a group chat. That one boy started in with the anti- Semitic garbage, posting pictures of Auschwitz victims and Orthodox Jews. My son responded by calling him names, and it escalated.

My son wears hoodies to school. We all know that people wearing hoodies have been discriminated against. This one boy then nicknamed my son “school shooter” because of his hoodies, which led to more taunts and anti-Semitism. He egged several other boys to call my kid “school shooter” and in a darkly joking manner, my son posted a picture of a gun and said, “When I come back to school, I won’t be empty handed.”

Do you know the difference between a student who makes that threat idly, and a student who intends to carry out said threat?

You DON’T. No one does. These incidences cannot be taken lightly.

 

The other boy screen shot it. Interestingly enough, he said nothing to his parents, the school, or the authorities for a month. He had no idea when my son would return, but still said nothing.

He waited a month, and after my son was back at school for two days, reported him.

I understand the importance of reporting EVERY SINGLE threat like this. In this instance, I question this kid’s motives.

 

My son was immediately suspended. He was not allowed to return to school until he was evaluated by a psychiatrist.

He told a full and truthful account of what transpired, and the school immediately opened an investigation into hate speech and anti-Semitism.

They found nothing. All evidence of the chat hat been erased. The other kids in the chat, life long friends with that one boy, don’t remember seeing anything.
Shocker.

 

My son is lucky that criminal charges were not pressed. You CANNOT EVER make statements like that.

He is paying for what he did dearly. School suspension is no joke. Being investigated by the police and school authorities is intense.

He will likely not be able to return to the program he worked so hard to get in. He has not been disallowed, but if the hallways are filled with whispers of “school shooter,” “Jew trouble maker,” he will be miserable there.

I have suspended all his online privileges. He is blocked from going online except to sites that are required for schoolwork.

 

 

All you parents out there fighting the good fight for gun control –  gun control will mean nothing if we don’t crack down on HATE CONTROL.

Kids don’t just become racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, xenophobic, in a vacuum. They learn it at home.

WATCH YOUR WORDS.

Don’t complain about your Jew boss. Don’t talk about how Mexicans milk the system. Stop telling your kids that if they ever came out as gay, you would be mortified.

 

And how about taking it a step further?

Your son or daughter who is so popular – can you not urge them to befriend the less popular? The less attractive? The sick kid? The misfit?

Can’t you spend a little time with them talking about inclusion? Would it be SO GODDAMN TERRIBLE if your popular kid befriended the transgender kid? The kid with Asperger’s? The new kid who just moved here?

 

I don’t have the time or the energy to investigate the psychological profiles of all the teenage kids who shot up their schools, but I guarantee you they were made to feel like discarded garbage.

You can argue for gun control until you are blue in the face, and I tell you IT WON’T MATTER IF WE DON’T EXERCISE HATE CONTROL.

 

I am by no means a perfect parent  – I suck, obviously, or my son wouldn’t be suspended right now. But I have always encouraged him to befriend that transgender kid no one speaks to, that fat kid everyone made fun of – and he has.

 

For GOD’S SAKE,  can you not do the same?

Teenage brains are not fully developed. They are filled with hormonal fluctuations and they are experiencing emotions they cannot process.

They cannot navigate through baseless hatred as well as we adults have learned to do.

 

I’m not even that observant of a Jew, but I am so SICK AND TIRED of the anti –Semitism aimed at us, I hope he DOES leave that program and we can move far, far away.

 

Parents. You really want to cut down on school shootings?

STOP. THE. HATE.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have no more words. But you can talk to me. 
I’m listening. 

On Using The N-Word in Your Post Title: A Cautionary Tale

Is it possible to fall in love at 8 years old? I did. I can’t say his name, because he went on to become well known in the Manhattan music scene. Part of me itches to write it; and accidentally reach him, this man I’m still a little in love with.

He lived upstairs from me. We became “boyfriend-girlfriend” 3 year later, in middle school. I was 11, he was 12. My first kiss. His mouth tasted like warm honey.

People say love is blind. Which includes color blind. He was black, I was white. We didn’t say “African-American” back then. I didn’t see his color. Or rather, my love for him transcended it.

I was 11 the first time someone hurled this vituperation at me: “N-word Lover.” I was confused. Yes, I loved him. What did that even mean?

He was an incredibly talented drummer. He lived for music, and for me.

When we were in 8th grade, boys from another neighborhood chased him into a deserted area.

Hunted him, like an animal.

And broke his arm.

—

It healed. I did not.

By high school, we were apart, and I knew the agony of first love ended. Off he went to Music and Art, as New Yorkers call it. High School of Performing Arts, the school the movie “Fame” is set in.

We’d broken up before that. Our families stepped in and demanded we split right after he’d been attacked.  These words awaken a memory that pierces me afresh. Details have been imprinted permanently; then veiled. Now the veil is lifted.

I had that revilement hurled at me many times over the decades that followed. Anytime I dated a man of color, I was abused by both races. White people felt I was somehow betraying my race. African-American or Hispanic people felt I was “stealing” from them, dating men I had no business dating.

It’s No Man’s land.

In the end, I was a coward. I married a white Jewish man I shouldn’t have crossed the street with. Because he was one of my own “kind.” I’m not saying I didn’t love him – I did. Deeply. But by the time I met him, I only dated Caucasian men. I’d had enough.

I live in an area where there are almost no Jewish people. I didn’t know that when I bought my house. Even if I had- it wouldn’t have mattered. I just don’t think about those things.

But now I have a child. And I have to think about those things. He is always the only Jewish kid in his class. He feels very alone. He suffers for it.

He had a best friend last year. His mother sought me out on Back-To-School Night. Came in, calling out, “Where is Little Dude’s mom, Andrew cannot not stop talking about him!”  We exchanged numbers. They were BFFs from the first day of school. Inseparable for months.

Until Andrew found out we were Jewish. After that, he never spoke to my son again.

When you have a kid, and they hurt like that…it’s different than your own hurt. It’s much, much worse. It’s an amalgam of your pain and theirs. Times one hundred.

And this week, yet again.  We’re hosting a holiday breakfast in his classroom. The class mom emailed the 4 of us running it, asking who would like to read a holiday book. Little Dude was all over that.

“Mom, please, YOU be the reader!”

He’s been listening to Christmas books for the last 5 years. So I volunteered. The class mom asked if we needed the librarian to help us choose something.

“No thanks, he’s picked his favorite Hanukkah book. It’s hilarious, and the kids will love it.”

She sent me an email.  No holiday books allowed. The teacher only wants winter-themed books.

After I could breathe again, I starting working on how I was going to present this to my son. I ended up just saying it very offhandedly,

“Oh, Mrs. Dugan wants a winter-themed book; we should go the library to get one.”

He’s too smart for that.  “What? Since when? That’s crazy! They read a Christmas book every year” and on and on.  That night he cried himself to sleep, which he hasn’t done in years.

 —

I needed to put the pain of this somewhere. I wrote a post about Real Life Trolls attacking me.  I titled it:

“Confessions of a N-word Lover.” I spelled the word out.

Because of all things in the world,  I abhor racism the most. Because I’ve proudly loved black, white, and brown men. Because I thought I would use that word blatantly and take the stigma off of it. Like the artist who inspired me to become a writer – Patti Smith.

I contacted Le Clown, because I was borrowing a phrase of his in the post. I wanted to make sure he was comfortable with that.

 And then he took the time, because he is the incredible Clown he is, to tell me that he was worried for me. That he feared I would be attacked, not by trolls, but by well spoken people. And that it was perhaps not my place to take the sting off this word, because using it lacked sensitivity.

Thank God.

I took it down.

If people don’t read you, then your message exists in a vacuum.

Mostly, I took it down because the thought of hurting anyone is abhorrent to me. As immune as I am to that word in print, others are not. Others did not grow up desensitized to it through repetition.

Le Clown was right.

After I posted today, I went on my reader to comment on some posts.  Bloggers had unfollowed me; beloved bloggers.

And now? Now I have to sit with the fact that I hurt some of you. Maybe many of you.

What if you unfollowed me because you’re  African-American? Or if you’re married to someone African-American?  Or you just thought it was disgusting?

This post is to say, if I hurt you, I am sorry. I was insensitive. This was a hard lesson.

Yes, I am provocative and edgy. But to hurt people? The way I’ve been hurt? The way my son is being hurt? To do the exact thing to people that incited me to write the damn post?

It’s tearing me up. And now I have to live with that.

We have to do better. Intentions are not enough. If my actions are insensitive; cause pain, whether intentional or not, I need to examine those actions.  Better yet, to think before I act.

—

I wish I’d had the courage to marry the boy upstairs.

And we were sitting here right now, and he would kiss me with those beautiful, honey flavored, color blind lips.

Kiss these tears off my face.

Kiss these words off my lips.

Did I do the right thing, taking that post down? Talk to me. I’m listening.