The controversy surrounding the arrest of 14-year-old MacArthur High School freshman, Ahmed Mohamed in Irving, Texas, for bringing what school officials thought was a bomb but was in fact, according to Mohamed a digital clock brought to mind the things I, and so many others did that a majority of us got away with when I was in high school and grade school, and only rarely did the administration question our actions or thoughts.
I remember in grade school from 76’ to 84’ how in seventh grade one of my classmates imitated rocker Ozzy Osbourne and bit a head off a dead squirrel. I still say that story is nothing more than the stuff of legend as I was not there that morning before the 8 a.m. bell rang to actually see it. I do know that person had a “come to Jesus” meeting before the principal that day though.
Those weren’t the only questionable incidents. Another high school classmate I knew wrote dotted lines in his wrists that said, “Cut here”, that got some instructors laughing. When the ethics instructor asked him why he wrote that on his wrists he told him that if he wrote it on his neck, no one would see the joke and that his mother would kill him for ruining his shirts. The ethics teacher got a big laugh out of that one.
These incidents occurred at a time when mass shootings, though they did occur, did not happen on a weekly basis like they do now. Mass shootings in grade and high schools were as unheard of back then as the idea of hijacking jetliners full of fuel and plowing them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon let alone envisioning the collapse of the twin towers. Yes, America dealt with terrorism back in the 1980s and liberals worried it would be President Ronald Reagan (1980-1988) who’d bring about the United States’ destruction with a full-scale nuclear war with Russia but somehow, that was all furthest from our minds, or maybe we conservatives felt safer knowing we had a leader who didn’t negotiate with terrorists.
Those times are gone now. If word got around about my little screenplay and I was a high school student today, I probably would have been called in to see a counselor as the administrators poured over my writings wondering if it’s the macabre bloody equivalent of the kinds of diaries mass murderers Eric Harris, Seung-Hui Cho, and James Holmes churned out before they picked up their guns and ammo.
“We live in an age where you can’t take things like that to school,” said Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd in the Dallas Morning News. “Of course we’ve seen across our country horrific things happen, we have to err on the side of caution.”
“People at the school thought it might be a bomb because it looks exactly like a fucking bomb,” said host Bill Maher on his Sept. 18 telecast on HBO who defended the teacher for alerting school officials. “Did the teacher really do a wrong thing? So, the teacher is just supposed to see something that looks like a bomb and be, ‘Oh, wait, this might just be my white privilege talking? I sure don’t want to be politically incorrect, so I’ll just let it go.’”
Maybe if 9/11 hadn’t happened and if mass shootings only occurred at workplaces instead of everywhere today and school officials consider sending students home with a note asking their parents to give them canned goods to take to classes to throw at would-be shooters as a means of self-defense, perhaps Ahmed Mohamed’s “homemade experiment” as Irving police found in their investigation would not have caused any alarm.
This is a different America now, Mr. Mohamed. But hey, at least you got invited by President Obama to visit the White House.
©9/23/15
I remember in grade school from 76’ to 84’ how in seventh grade one of my classmates imitated rocker Ozzy Osbourne and bit a head off a dead squirrel. I still say that story is nothing more than the stuff of legend as I was not there that morning before the 8 a.m. bell rang to actually see it. I do know that person had a “come to Jesus” meeting before the principal that day though.
During freshman year in high school a friend of mine and I took our English instructor’s offer for extra credit and submitted journals weekly. My friend wrote stories where he is “Mad Max”, the vengeful loner/former police officer Mel Gibson played in those apocalyptic films from 1979 to 1985 who battles outlaw motorcycle gangs. While I wrote a sequel to the gangster cocaine epic, Scarface (1983) called Scarface II: The Exterminator in which I cast various classmates in certain roles (and yes, a majority of those characters were killed off in my screenplay and yes, I was the lead character). If it’s any consolation I got killed off too.When word got around in the fall of 1987 senior year that one woman classmate said she idolized cult leader, Charles Manson, and the government teacher asked her why, the woman’s response was as cryptic as when conservatives ask liberal supporters of President Barack Obama and possible 2016 Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton what things did they accomplish in office and can come up with nothing. The classmate offered no justification as to why she looked up to Manson. At least her conversation with the government teacher gave us all a class day off in which we watched the 1976 mini-series, "Helter Skelter."
Those weren’t the only questionable incidents. Another high school classmate I knew wrote dotted lines in his wrists that said, “Cut here”, that got some instructors laughing. When the ethics instructor asked him why he wrote that on his wrists he told him that if he wrote it on his neck, no one would see the joke and that his mother would kill him for ruining his shirts. The ethics teacher got a big laugh out of that one.
These incidents occurred at a time when mass shootings, though they did occur, did not happen on a weekly basis like they do now. Mass shootings in grade and high schools were as unheard of back then as the idea of hijacking jetliners full of fuel and plowing them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon let alone envisioning the collapse of the twin towers. Yes, America dealt with terrorism back in the 1980s and liberals worried it would be President Ronald Reagan (1980-1988) who’d bring about the United States’ destruction with a full-scale nuclear war with Russia but somehow, that was all furthest from our minds, or maybe we conservatives felt safer knowing we had a leader who didn’t negotiate with terrorists.
Those times are gone now. If word got around about my little screenplay and I was a high school student today, I probably would have been called in to see a counselor as the administrators poured over my writings wondering if it’s the macabre bloody equivalent of the kinds of diaries mass murderers Eric Harris, Seung-Hui Cho, and James Holmes churned out before they picked up their guns and ammo.
Kids today get suspended if they so much as turn their hand into a gun and point it at other classmates as though that person may one day pull out the real thing. If instructors saw me uttering the lyrics, “All the other kids with the pumped up kicks, you better run, better run, outrun my gun”, of Foster the People’s Pumped Up Kicks, I don’t believe for one minute they’d accept my answer that the reason I was singing it was because I liked the song. They’d see my actions as something darker and more sinister.Today as a result of the recent mass shootings in so many schools, the only reason if I had kids as to why I’d pay the outrageous tuition and send them to private school is not because of the supposed quality education my kids would get, but because I have yet to see anyone going on a mass shooting spree at a private school. I know my kids would come home unharmed. Ahmed Mohamed’s arrest was the result of today’s unsettling climate in America when most people still believe another 9/11 style attack will happen again.
“We live in an age where you can’t take things like that to school,” said Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd in the Dallas Morning News. “Of course we’ve seen across our country horrific things happen, we have to err on the side of caution.”
“People at the school thought it might be a bomb because it looks exactly like a fucking bomb,” said host Bill Maher on his Sept. 18 telecast on HBO who defended the teacher for alerting school officials. “Did the teacher really do a wrong thing? So, the teacher is just supposed to see something that looks like a bomb and be, ‘Oh, wait, this might just be my white privilege talking? I sure don’t want to be politically incorrect, so I’ll just let it go.’”
Maybe if 9/11 hadn’t happened and if mass shootings only occurred at workplaces instead of everywhere today and school officials consider sending students home with a note asking their parents to give them canned goods to take to classes to throw at would-be shooters as a means of self-defense, perhaps Ahmed Mohamed’s “homemade experiment” as Irving police found in their investigation would not have caused any alarm.
This is a different America now, Mr. Mohamed. But hey, at least you got invited by President Obama to visit the White House.
©9/23/15
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