4.21.2007

A Quiet Kid.

In my earliest years, I wasn't the quietest kid. Somewhere between third and fourth grade I made the transition from extroverted class clown to introverted shy nerd. I got beat up. Girls laughed at me. Even the fellow outcasts I surrounded myself with made fun of me. The less I spoke, the less fodder I'd offer for mockery. My parents were no longer concerned about my hyperactivity, and a single visit to a child psychologist on that matter was left in the past. Fearing I might do drugs or fall in with the wrong crowd or be seriously injured by the wrong crowd, and wanting a better life for me, they saved and sent me to a private high school. There was no physical abuse, not to the extent of what I'd endured up to that point, but plenty of psychological abuse. I was the son of a mechanic in a thrift shop suit, surrounded by the sons of doctors and lawyers garbed in name brand new clothing. I escaped into comic books. I withdrew for months at a time, not socializing with my friends from my old school and even turning down invitations from lifelong neighborhood friends. I've been called horrible things and compared to horrible things. I've been through a lot and I've done a lot. I've never killed anyone because of it, and rest assured there is no unwritten “yet” in that statement.

When something like the Virginia Tech Massacre happens, when someone snaps and takes lives, and it makes no sense, we try to make sense of it. Was it the video games he played? A rap video? Maybe he was on drugs? My father even asked me at one point if I thought Cho Seung-hui was sent by “the terrorists”. Blame is cast, and even before all the facts were out I was seeing unrelated clips from video games on the news. The one common factor in these situations always seems to be the same. He was a quiet kid. He kept to himself.

So why doesn't every quiet loner who gets picked on snap? Why do so many of us channel our pain into positive creativity, or develop a sense of humor? We learn our comfort zones, learn to break out of our shell and gradually develop relationships with trusted friends. There's nothing in popular culture that instills hatred and violence per se. In most cases it's only a trigger for something that's already there.

Could this horrible, horrible tragedy have been averted? The killer was autistic and a loner that rarely spoke. Along with the video that was irresponsibly broadcast, one student is interviewed and speaks of trying to reach out to Cho. He never responded, never spoke or made eye contact in the hall. After a while the other kids stopped trying. Could they have tried harder, or was the underlying bad wiring too screwed up for Cho to ever respond?

What will set someone off? How do you diffuse a ticking time bomb? Maybe other students made fun of the way he spoke or dressed, but many got to him without knowing it. Just by being wealthy, or better dressed, or whatever, they were stirring all these thoughts, and no one knew what was happening inside his brain. To be sure, there is a lesson for young people to learn about how they treat one another, to realize everyone has feelings and words have consequences. But this too falls under the search for rationale. Sometimes, as Swanshadow put it,the person might just be a “whackjob”. It wouldn't matter if he had strong faith, or responsible attentive parents, or friends. Nothing anyone said or did would have altered his chemical imbalance.

32 people are dead, cut down before their lives really began. 29 more are wounded. All were caught in the crossfire, and Sean raises a point that Cho might have started with himself. It was a thought out and orchestrated plan though, from purchasing weapons and ammunition, to filming the videos to send to the media, to a manifesto complete with photographs. And there it is again, that link between creativity and pain. A normal person finds positive outlets. Write a poem. Paint a picture. Tell a joke. A disturbed person orchestrates mass murder and visual companion pieces.

Amid media vying for ratings and politicians turning loss into gain, the best thoughts and coverage of this week came from Darrell, who actually stopped writing for a few days and set up his site as a memorial. He and his family live a mere two hours away, and his response reminded me that we all are close to something like this at any given time. It's sad that death is so commonplace that we become desensitized, and sensitivity decreases with geographic distance. We hang on to routine for a sense of sanity and normalcy, and sometimes it takes a while for things to phase us.

He was a quiet kid. He kept to himself. A lot of quiet people keep to themselves, and I'm left pondering the irony in Eleanor Rigby:

”All the lonely people; where DO they all come from?”

10 Comments:

Blogger b13 said...

The lonely people obviously come from someplace vaguely Asian... :/

4/21/2007 3:22 AM  
Blogger b13 said...

What the hell am I still doing up?

4/21/2007 3:23 AM  
Blogger Darrell said...

Very, very well done, with a lot of insight and retrospect, as well. In other words, the kind of post I've come to expect at the Nexus. It's a shame that there is a difference between "quiet kids" and "silently seething kids," and that we don't find out when the one is really the other until something like this happens.

I like your use of Eleanor Rigby. I also have to think about a very powerful poem, Richard Cory, by Edward A. Robinson. Thanks, btw, for the link and the kind words.

4/21/2007 3:09 PM  
Blogger SPM said...

I said what I said every time, I hear about some disenfranchised young man who has easy access to guns.

Although I will point out that a constructive outlet would have been more desirable.

In addition, I didn't want to give this person anymore play on the blogosphere.

Sean

4/21/2007 6:36 PM  
Blogger b13 said...

Sorry Sean, but by outlawing guns you will not stop bad people fom getting them.

If you look at prohibition or illegal drugs you will see that it did not stop those that want to get the "product."

I agree with Ted Nugent's following points: "Does anybody join me in realizing that 32 people were killed because the killer wasn`t stopped?"

"In Oregon, where a Columbine tragedy was unfolding, it was a student who went to his truck and got a .22 squirrel rifle and stopped the mass murder. It was a citizen, an off-duty cop in Salt Lake City, that stopped an armed monster from killing citizens at random. He stopped it."

"A few years back, an assistant principal at Pearl High School in Mississippi, which was a gun-free zone, retrieved his legally owned Colt .45 from his car and stopped a Columbine wannabe from continuing his massacre at another school after he had killed two and wounded more at Pearl."

"It was just up the road from Virginia Tech where an Appalachia law school, students once again retrieved legally owned firearms and stopped an armed assault. Who is not getting this information?"

"If a good guy with a gun can stop evil crime and tragedy so often, why can`t we apply that policy instead of Sarah Brady`s gun-free zone policy?"

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/19/commentary.nugent/

I feel that every adult should own a side arm. People are hesitant to start shooting if they know they will be shot.

Linda from Plymouth, Michigan hits the nail on the head with her comment regarding the above commentary.
"To back up Ted's points, when have we ever heard of a gunman killing 32 people in a police station? How about at an Army Base in Michigan? Nope. How about at the local shooting range? Tons of guns there, you'd think there'd be mass killing there every other weekend with all the guns...oh wait...at all those places the victims would be armed and would shoot back. An armed gunman wouldn't get out more than one shot, if that, before being stopped."

4/21/2007 7:58 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

...or, there'd just be a whole lot more shootings.

4/22/2007 2:07 PM  
Blogger Darrell said...

Rey: ...or, there'd just be a whole lot more shootings.

No disrespect, but you'd be surprised how sobering it is to have a gun in your hands. I'm inclined to think that most people are reasonable, and that if most reasonable people had more experience with, access to and knowledge about firearms, there'd be less violence.

Having said that, I'll also say that on a personal level I dislike guns.

4/22/2007 3:15 PM  
Blogger Lorna said...

great post, respectful and insightful.

4/22/2007 6:46 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

No disrespect, but you'd be surprised how sobering it is to have a gun in your hands.

Oh I've held one and I'll even step it down and say a paintball gun is even sobering. But if the 20th century (or my old neighborhood, or anyone driving on the LIE, or the people who frequent the G Train at night) has proved anything it's this: Empowered People will Do and Justify the Unreasonable.

4/22/2007 7:42 PM  
Blogger Otis said...

Nice post MCF.

I know it sounds hollow, but the old saying still applies: Guns don't kill people, people kill people.

Outlaw guns and then you have to outlaw knives. Then household cleaners. Then baseball bats. Then whips.

Wait a minute, now I'm picturing a scene from the movie Airplane.

4/23/2007 11:14 PM  

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