Truly loving our young people

I’m a limited man, really. I have relatively few passions, but I spend most of my life involved in those. My passions are my family, movies, dogs, literature, basketball, writing and working with young people.

If I can combine those passions, it makes it all the better. If, for example, I can mix my passion for films with family, or my love for music with family, that’s a beautiful thing for my heart. If I can combine dogs and young people, or basketball and young people, or literature and young people, it’s the best of all possible worlds.

Over much of my life I’ve taught, coached, officiated, mentored and otherwise worked with young people, ranging in age from 7-year-olds in Little League to the college/university age young folks I work with most frequently now. This semester I’m fortunate to be teaching a college-level cross-enrollment course at an area high school, in which all of my students are high school juniors and seniors. (Go Hornets!)

So yes, I love young people, and that I generally prefer their company to that of adults says a lot, including about my glaring lack of maturity at age 59.

Because I don’t want to compare my feelings to those of other people, I won’t say I feel the mass deaths of kids more deeply than others. I will say, though, that it crushes me every time it happens.

After I rise from being crushed, I hope and I pray that something will be done about the carnage at our country’s schools, the spectacle … no, the debacle … of sick people going onto campuses with semi-automatic weapons and mowing down innocent young folks.

After months of consternation by some, and months of others saying, “Now is not the time to talk about gun issues; the pain is too fresh,” nothing is done yet again. A few months later, another group of children, of innocents, is slaughtered.

I believe a young person’s inherent right to live is more important than some wannabe tough guy’s right to shoot 150 rounds from an AR-15 at a target. And such weapons are not used for hunting. Really, who puts 50 bullets into a deer or duck?

Some people say that the problem isn’t semi-automatic weapons, the problem is mental health, the problem is bullying, the problem is violent video games, the problem is hip-hop, the problem is lack of religion in schools, and the problem is not enough armed people and lack of general security on campuses.

As someone who works on campuses, I can tell you mental-health and bullying issues among students are being dealt with in a more proactive way than ever before, that violent video game use among young people is down, that malevolent inspiration from hip-hop is not a huge thing, that there is religion and there are many religious people on campuses, that many schools, particularly high schools, have at least one armed police officer, usually called a school resource officer, on campus and most schools have vigilant security programs.

A coach, a geography teacher and the athletic director at the high school in Parkland, Fla., where 17 people were murdered by a semi-automatic wielding mentally ill person last week lost their lives in trying to protect students. People often project about what they would do in such situations, but we don’t really know what we’re made of until we’re tested. I would like to believe I would do what those selfless men did for their students, but I don’t really know, because my devotion to my kids, and my bravery, haven’t come under fire.

I can only hope, and pray, that they never do.