Ticking

I was driving up to East Lansing the other night and was tired of listening to the satellite radio, by the way, they seem to have the same play lists we used to listen to and get tired of when we were kids. Anyway, I grabbed a cd and was listening to it for a while when the song “Ticking” by Elton John came on. I’m not going to explain the song to you, if you know it, great, if not, it’s on the playlist to the right of the blog you’re reading. Again, anyway, it got me thinking about situations similar to that talked about in the song. There’s a part of the song that goes:

“So what was it that brought the squad cars
Screaming up your drive.
To notify your parents of the manner
In which you died.”

It got me thinking about the parents of those that commit these horrendous crimes we seem to have a monopoly on here in this country. I know, stuff happens in other countries too, but let’s be honest with ourselves here, it happens here more than anywhere else.

Let’s lose the percentage of those that kill that come from abusive families and things of that ilk, I understand that extenuating circumstances and social environment play a big part in this kind of stuff, not excusing it, just willing to understand it for my current purpose. I want to talk about the ones that come from families like yours and mine. They’re out there by the hundreds, maybe thousands.

The thing that really gets to me is the parents of those that do these things. Can you imagine what the emotion was the moment they found out what their offspring had done? I mean, look at the parents of the two kids that did the Columbine thing. Seemingly decent families, parents at work one day and they get this phone call telling them that their child, their baby has just done the most unspeakable thing you can possibly think of. I just find that amazing.

My kids were no angels, who’s are? But never in my wildest dreams would I expect that type of call or knock on the door. It’s every parent’s nightmare. I remember a time when the police knocked on our door in the middle of the night and the sheer panic that Shelly and I felt until we were assured that nobody was hurt and that all they needed was for us to drive up to a park where our son was with some friends past curfew so we could drive him home.

You raise your kids as well as you can and you hope for the best. I don’t believe any parent, well any of the type I’m talking about, doesn’t want and expect their kids to grow up to be productive citizens. Yet these things happen and, as we should, we always focus on the victims of these senseless crimes. I think I’m of the opinion that the family of the criminal is also a victim. No, not in the same way but they’ve also just lost a family member.

In my mind, I keep going back to the Columbine shootings. Not only their neighbors but also society as a whole have ostracized the Klebold and Harris families. All they did, and I’m not downplaying it, was not pay attention to their kids all the time. It’s easy, as non-victims, to say they should have known more or seen the signals but I think that’s ridiculous. Honestly, if you’re the parents of teens do you really know what they’re doing all the time? If you say yes to that then you’re blinder than any of these folks I’m talking about.

Yes I weep for the victims of these types of crimes, as we all should, I also feel just as bad for the families of those that committed the crime. They’ve also just lost their child, their baby and for some their very reason for being. These things are tragedies on so many levels. Don’t think for a second that the Klebold or Harris families didn’t love their kids, and don’t pretend that these families aren’t just as victimized by the terror brought upon us by their children. Imagine what it’d be like to turn on the news one day and see your child as the perpetrator. I kind of get the feeling that your legs would give out on you, you’d lose the ability to breathe for a bit and your life would be changed just as much, if not more, as the victims families simply because it’s your child that caused this pain in so many.