No Response by Ben Tanzer
“the boys still do not know about the shootings, we will have to talk”
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I am meeting. The room is small, the table is covered with sweaty pitchers of cold water, and I am in a hotel at the end of a service road near O’Hare.
The only reason this is important at all, is that I need to be back in my neighborhood by early afternoon. The boys have a show at school and I promised them that I will be there.
So now I am off and I am full sprint, and rushing to the train and school, and in the act of doing so, I am ignoring the constant pings on my phone, the texts, Facebook messages, calls and emails, which are suddenly, and rapidly, coming in.
When I make it to the auditorium, I slump into a chair, catch my breath, and finally look at my phone.
There has been a mass shooting at an elementary school in Newton, Connecticut. Children Noah’s age have been killed. And their parents now have to face the reality that they will never see their children perform anywhere again, because they are never going see their children again.
I try to ignore this and watch the boys perform.
Debbie and I agree on the Sunday night following the show that as the boys still do not know about the shootings, we will have to talk to them before school the next day since someone will certainly mention it.
“I need to talk to you guys about something that happened on Friday,” I say as we walk to school on Monday morning.
I am holding Noah’s hand as Myles zips along beside us. I could have said something at breakfast as they wiped the sleep from their eyes and ate their cereal, but I didn’t know if they would go to school after that.
“There was a shooting at a school on Friday,” I say, “and Mommy and I want to be sure you hear about it from us and not someone else.”
No response.
“The important thing,” I continue, “is that it happened far away from here.”
I say this because we read that this is what you are supposed to say.
“So he can’t come here then?” Noah asks.
How literal should I be with my response?
“No,” I say, “plus, the shooter… he hurt himself.”
Fuck, that won’t be clear, seven-year olds don’t understand euphemisms, and while Myles hasn’t reacted yet, he will to this.
“He hurt himself,” Noah says, “I don’t get it.”
“He killed himself,” Myles says, matter-of-factly.
“Oh,” Noah says softly.
“And he was probably on drugs or alcohol, right?” Myles says, already creating a narrative that makes sense to him.
I don’t think that is true, but does it matter?
“He might have been,” I say, “we don’t know, he was probably sick though, and anyway, it was far away from here, that’s important to remember. Also, if you guys hear anything in school that confuses you, I want you to speak to me or Mommy, okay?”
Nothing, no response, but that is done, for now, and I can breathe again.
I tell them it happened far away, just like I tell them that death won’t come to them or the people they love for a long time. That’s best practice, and it’s developmentally appropriate, but that doesn’t make it true, and there’s the rub.
Myles is only eleven and he has already had a classmate die from cancer, so he knows the idea that death doesn’t come for a long time just isn’t accurate.
“I don’t want to die, ever,” Noah says to me one night.
“No one does, baby,” I say, “but you’re a little boy and that isn’t going to happen for a long time.”
“Can you really say that?” Myles says leaning over and whispering to me. “Naomi died and she was just a little girl.”
I want to tell him to be quiet because this is so not the moment, but he’s right, and he will never be able to pretend otherwise.
When the Aurora, Colorado shooting happened, an old friend of mine posted a comment on Facebook asking how gun control advocates could be outraged about that shooting, but not about the daily shootings happening on the streets of Chicago, a city he stressed is known for its leadership on gun control. He also asked how anyone could question the right to carry concealed weapons at a time like this.
I found myself enraged by what I felt was a bullshit comparison, an attack on Chicago, and grandstanding in general.
“I think this post is really inappropriate,” I wrote, “Your comparisons between the Aurora shooting and shootings in Chicago are specious, gun control laws here have been gutted, and your timing is disrespectful to the victims.”
I didn’t mention specific gun control laws themselves though, because I was unsure of what works and not confident in my ability to defend them regardless.
“Ben! Fuck you,” he wrote back. “My nephew was killed in that movie theater.”
Shit.
His response didn’t make him right, but I later realized that not unlike Myles and the Newtown shootings, we were both trying to take control of a narrative that upset us and made us feel powerless to protect our children or anyone else’s.
I sent him a note to that affect.
“Ben, it’s cool,” he wrote back. “I forgot about it already. Now go back to writing your stories.”
One month after Newtown, there is an argument one block from the boys’ school. It is the culmination of a long running fight between two neighborhood guys that finally comes to an end when one guy draws a gun and the other guy dies.
We can no longer tell the boys that shootings happen far away, and it doesn’t matter that it wasn’t a school shooting. Shootings do happen here, and innocent school kids like Hadiya Pendleton get shot in Chicago, their city, all the time.
It’s also pointless trying to explain to them how a shooting that results from an argument is different than a mass shooting such as Newton or Aurora, or that mass shootings like Newtown are a small town phenomena, because that doesn’t matter to a child, shot is shot, dead is dead, and it’s either close enough that you can touch it, or it isn’t.
Still, different kinds of shootings call for different policies. Mental health issues need to be addressed, but so do policies addressing poverty, bullying, and an array of other things.
What also needs to be addressed, on some level though, is access to guns. But how would that work, what does that mean in terms of the 2nd Amendment, and should we even care?
When I was Myles’ age my parents took us to a party, and one of the other guests had brought his gun because he thought people would enjoy shooting it.
He asked me if I wanted to shoot it and I said yes, of course.
My dad and I joined him and some other guests in the backyard. The friend set-up a can twenty-five yards away and he explained to me what I needed to do.
The gun was solid in my hands, warm, and smooth. It was quiet as I lined-up the shot, and when I pulled the trigger, the gun jumped, sending a shock wave rippling up to my shoulder.
As I fell backwards, the can flew up into the air.
It was a tremendous feeling, full of power and triumph, and I remember it as if it just happened yesterday, and not thirty years ago on some hill so far from where I live now.
That feeling doesn’t affect my feelings on gun control, but it does strike me that this is where the tension lies, the intersection between wanting to feel powerful and in control of something, and the fear of loss, the loss of lives, of identity, and of freedom from someone telling you how to live.
That’s an intellectual reaction though.
Since Aurora, and the shootings in Newtown, my neighborhood, and so many other places, it feels impossible not to wish guns would just go away as they have in other places around the world where these things don’t seem to happen.
The thing is, I know I have felt this way the whole time, and what I wish I could have said to my old high school friend was, fuck me, fuck you, no guns dude, anywhere, how’s that, no access, none, period.
But I was scared to say that, I didn’t want to sound so extreme, and I hate myself now for thinking that way.
After Newtown, that same old friend posted a similar pro-gun screed on his Facebook page. Another old friend responded and said that he had a nephew killed in Newtown.
He then went on to say, what I had been unable to say myself.
“Most people may be responsible with their guns, but since so many others are willing to ruin it for the rest of you, too bad, no guns for anyone.”
To which I say, amen to that.
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Ben Tanzer is an Emmy-award winning Public Service Announcement writer and the author of the books My Father's House, You Can Make Him Like You, So Different Now, and the forthcoming Orphans and Lost in Space, among others. Ben also oversees day to day operations of This Zine Will Change Your Life and can be found online at This Blog Will Change Your Life, the center of his growing lifestyle empire.