Let Them Have Guns!

I had never considered giving our teachers guns because that seems a little North Korea-ish and also goes against everything we should have learned from Matilda, but this week it keeps coming up on my news feeds. Even the president mentioned it. Trump suggested that we could give teachers guns and also give them a little bit of a bonus for being armed, which would be “practically for free”, acknowledging that we pay teachers so little that a bonus on teacher pay standards is barely even noticeable in any type of realistic budget.

Anyone who thinks administrators want their teachers to have guns has no clue how the education system in this country actually works. Recently, there was a video circulating where an unarmed teacher was escorted out and handcuffed for questioning why the superintendent’s new contract included a $30,000 a year raise when teachers and other staff were not receiving raises. I am guessing that particular superintendent is not going to vote for arming his teachers. He doesn’t even want his teachers armed with a voice.

Teachers have been undervalued in both respect and compensation basically since teachers, so when I make the argument that teachers should not, under any circumstance, be armed, maybe I am being hasty. Teachers are amazing at multitasking, and I embrace the idea of considering our teachers as heroes, but imagining a teacher as she diagrams sentences on the board, with dry erase markers she bought with her own money, pulling a John Wayne as a troubled and maniacal killer bursts into the room is a bit of a stretch. For starters, the idea that the teacher is going to shoot someone who is most likely a current or former student, seems problematic. For ending the conversation entirely, it might be important to consider the liability issues.

I don’t think teachers should be armed in order to serve as low cost security guards, but perhaps since we keep suggesting it to them, teachers might be interested in having guns and taking advantage of their second amendment right. If any group of citizens in America has the need and the capacity to form a well-regulated militia, it is our teachers. What kind of group could emerge in our society that would have the motivation and capacity to join together and stand up in arms against tyranny? It would have to be a group of people who are not only dissatisfied with their current conditions, underpaid and over stressed, but also highly organized, educated and energetic.

Creating an ad hoc army would not be easy; it would require the type of people who are able to get twenty children who are ordinarily unable to sit still long enough to eat four chicken nuggets to sit at attention for eight hours. It would take the kind of people who can raise their hands like Moses and get a table of first graders to stand up in the lunchroom, gather all their dishes and trash, and exit out of the room single file. It would be people who can get our most unruly citizens to march in a straight line and then get them to fall silent with the simple motion of an index finger to the lips.

A citizen militia will be low on resources, so it will require the kind of people who know how to get by with almost no budget and are willing to put up their own money for the cause, people who have been taking no for an answer for decades and continue to show up, not for money but because they believe what they are doing each day makes our country a better place.  It will require people who know history and how to print legibly. It will definitely require custom t-shirts.

My point here is that maybe everything deserves at least minimal consideration. When I hear people talking about arming the teachers, my first thought is that it is an asinine idea and is an attempt to sidestep any real solution to America’s gun problem. But who am I to deny citizens their right to secure a free state? For some people, maybe that means having employers that pay for their pens—and not that Bic Ballpoint bullshit. Real pens with ink. Maybe it means demanding equitable pay and a reasonable level of value placed on doing a job that is vital to America’s future.



TGIF! June 6, 2014

Notes from my week in writing:

I received a rejection email from a publisher today three hours after I submitted. I like to think that is some kind of record! The standard these days is for publishers to send out responses by email at generally inappropriate times, like on a Friday night minutes after my date cancels so it is very clear that I am both professionally and personally unworthy. Also, it is usually after a long wait, sometimes six weeks or more, so I don’t remember that I even sent the submission out, and I didn’t know there was a possibility for someone to tell me that I am not good enough on that particular day. Most publishers have a standard email that states something along the lines of, “Due to the high volume of submissions we are unable to provide further feedback about your work at this time.” With this, the confident writer in me thinks the feedback could be that my submission was not the right length, off-topic, or the writing was just too funny, crass, or poetic. The non-confident writer in me assumes that they would tell me I am way out of my league, my writing is amateurish, and I am a sad little person. Also probably that I smell and my teeth  . . . they noticed my teeth.

At least with these rejections there is enough elapsed time to assume that people may have actually read what I wrote and even deliberated. I usually like to think that my work sat in the “maybe” pile for at least some duration, but with a three hour turnaround I can only assume that it was an instant diagnosis of: You Suck. The editor even signed the email with, “Thanks anyway” and then her name. I have read and reread this closing numerous times trying to make it sound better, even with different accents, like British, Jamaican, baby, robot, but it always comes across as condescending.

I have a theory about publishing and life: it is better to be rejected than to have regrets. Rejection is like pulling off a Band-Aid—it stings but just for an instant. The more exciting the possibility, the more it pulls at the tiny hairs. But regret is like a back ache, dull and debilitating, and it lingers. I would rather be covered in Band-Aids that are ready to be yanked off my flesh with an ambush of “thanks anyways” than to be immobilized on the couch with a heating pad.

So I keep writing. I am working on a non-funny memoir about my Dad with the working title: “Judge Judy.” I am also working on a humor piece about crying, and how I am constantly doing that (it is hilarious!) I have some submissions out, but I am terrible at keeping track, so at any minute I could be bombarded with rejection, and thanks to my phone, I can get that rejection anywhere, like while I am driving.

I wrote a poem  . .


I reach for gold coins as they fall from pockets with gaping holes.
I step into the night.
I brush past someone I used to love.
I’m transported by a swirling of words,
above yellow windows framing lives,
families, lovers—dishes clink, blue screens flicker.
I hover outside enviously narrating.
I plunge into steam.
I take the path from here. Always from here.

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