the world's news

 Yeah probably content warnings all over this. Skip if you wish. I will try to word as delicately as I can but I feel like I need to get it out.

So, Saturday after graduation, early afternoon, I switched on the news and it was another one of those "wait....what......something bad is going on" situations.

This one hits me a *little* harder because it's closer to home - the Allen outlet mall. I've not been specifically there, but I know where it is, I've been to McKinney (was there only a couple weeks ago*). And also, I had half-thought of running to Sherman for a little shopping but decided against it because traffic would be bad and it was maybe going to storm.

(*and was reminded of how uncomfortable I am in crowds. Oh, it was better because I was there with Lynn and her husband, I might have noped out earlier if I were alone)

But yeah. Another shooter situation. You probably know the details now. They're slowly releasing names of people killed. Of the people I know here, everyone is safe - I was momentarily worried because I could imagine a colleague going down there with their family after graduation, or someone from church going to shop (in fact, I think one of the women at church yesterday noted in a tone of shock that "I recognized those stores from the aerial footage")

Some cursed knowledge I've picked up over the years - some from seeing coverage of these things, some from the limited "active shooter" training I've done on campus**

(** we just got the talk and the creepy faked-up video "recreating" Columbine if there had been security cam footage. A former chair had to do the full training, which involved trying to evacuate a disused-building on campus under supposedly mock active shooter conditions. This is someone who is a fairly tough woman and she described it as "moderately traumatic")

- If you shelter in place from one of these things, and by some miracle you make it, YOU MUST put your hands up or on your head when you walk out. Act like you are a suspect but an unarmed one. Be prepared to be frisked and be prepared to be talked to roughly. Be prepared for it to be hours before you can get home.

- Masonry rooms offer some protection but ours have wooden doors that would be a weak spot

- There was talk of "a faculty member could use a belt to help hold the classroom door closed" which a lot of us took to mean "faculty members should volunteer to be sacrificial lambs" and if that's the case i at LEAST expect them to set up a scholarship in my name.

- The classrooms here BADLY need door lock upgrades. I cannot lock any of them from the inside, and trying to use my key to lock from the outside (and then get in) would take enough time I'd probably be a victim. We keep bringing this up but nothing is ever done. 

- the weapons currently most commonly used - well, the most delicate way I can put it is, they make identifying bodies from appearance impossible. (There's a soundbite of what one of the first responders found at this most recent atrocity that I won't ever forget and I wish I had never heard). I admit the image I always had of a GSW victim was the "NCIS or similar cop show" version, where they're shot once in the torso with a pistol and except for the patch of blood, they're recognizable. The weapons used now? Ain't that.

- that tells me that even more, if you're going somewhere, let someone know. Let them know when you get back. I read an NPR story where a young woman, an immigrant from India, was not identified very quickly because the only thing her family had to go on was "she doesn't answer her phone after about 2 pm on Saturday." And yes, I learned that trick in some situations in the past - we were taught that in college orientation, though that was a "this is so people will come looking for you if a guy has grabbed you to violate you" sort of thing. And I do it when going out to the field but that was always mainly an "in case I get hurt" thing, though now, if I were injured in a survivable way (like: stepping in a hole and breaking an ankle), I'd have my phone on me and could call for help. But still. There are occasionally people out there, and there are feral dogs and wild hogs. 

But now I guess I post on Twitter or Spoutible or somewhere "hey going to the grocery" and "hey I'm back" because one or two people there have my contact info and my mom's and if something happened it would be easier to notify? Which I hate. 

- I admit it also makes me wonder if I should consider pivoting more and more to "pick up at the curb" or "just don't go shopping in person." Which, again, I hate - it's 2020 all over again, and my mental health took a BAD turn then because I was sitting alone in my house stewing in my own thoughts and that is clearly not good for me. But I also fear crowds. (I suppose the answer is: shop as early in the day as you can, to avoid crowds, and go to small uncrowded places as much as possible for "entertainment" shopping, if you can't totally curtail that)

- It also makes me wish that it had been my lot in life to partner up. It's hard negotiating the world totally alone most of the time, and it's bad to sit at home on, say, a Sunday afternoon with no one to talk to but your own thoughts. 

- There are too many people out there who just either hate humanity, hate a group of it, or have convinced themselves that other humans aren't real, they're NPCs ("non playing characters") and that killing them doesn't matter. I don't get this. I was raised to look at other people and know there's a person there, someone with hopes and dreams and loves and fears, someone who's someone's kid or someone's parent, someone who, like me, just wants to do whatever they're doing and then get back home safely. And I was also taught to, on some level,. care that they get to do that! That's what makes me so sad and frustrated about these situations: do the perpetrators not see these people as people who have someone who loves them, someone who will miss them, do they not care the absolute harm they are inflicting, not just on that person and their loved ones but society as a whole? I guess not. I guess I can't try to use my own logic on someone who doesn't follow it. 

- Yes, it's a gun problem. But it's also a hatefulness problem. You can't do violence to another person without hate in your heart. I don't know how we fix that.