Never Over – Poetry Prompt 16

So that time is almost over again!

Come see the end of what we began.

How those days dragged on,

Or in the blink of an eye, they were gone.

Only now that I look back

Longing shows me what I lack.

Best days of my life.

Don’t forget walking between classes with friends.

Always remember that I learned from the ends,

Yet remember that those days are now gone.

So keep in mind what you had all along.

---

Written for Pooky’s Prompt for yesterday: http://pookypoetry.wordpress.com/2014/05/16/poetry-prompt-16-school-days/

School had a lot of interesting phases for me. Elementary school was a time of bullies and learning not to let the other kids get to me while also learning everything else. Middle school was about learning that people might still try to bully you, but that they lacked the imagination of kids in the younger grades (still don’t know why that was), but also learning that everything I learned in elementary school had a lot more to teach me while making me learn to accept that each teacher has a different set of rules. High school taught me that things are going to be hard, some times will be harder than others, but that it’s worth the end goal of being able to walk down that aisle with my friends and throw a cap in the air. (It also didn’t matter which cap you picked up from the floor at the end, because they were all the same, no one wrote their names in them. We were all the same in the end even while the cords on our robes were all so different.)

School was a fun learning experience and I really enjoyed it except for a few times and incidents, but I learned that even those will only last so long. There is always going to be more to life and it will come along at random and inconvenient times and I just have to live with it. Complaining takes too much time and energy, but it also has it’s time and place. I also learned that everyone can take a refresher course when their kids (or their siblings’ kids) need help with their homework.

Advertisement

A Day of Hope

Today is Easter, a day of hope, a day of renewal, a day of peace and joy. There are many different traditions on this day: going to church for a service (whichever church you may attend, if it’s Christian in any way, there’s likely to be an Easter service), family meals with extended family, gifts and (the favorite of many children) Easter egg hunts and baskets of candy.

Easter is always the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox and so it is one of those few moving holidays. There are other holidays that surround it, are a part of it or are related to it in some way (Lent, Eastertide, Holy Week, Passover, etc.). There are different days where Easter falls that mean different things to some people. One year, my sister’s birthday was on Easter.

This year, something similar has happened. Easter is on the 15th anniversary of the shootings at Columbine High School. If ever there was a day for hope and the escape from the tomb, it is today.

There is hope for those who both die and survive shootings. There is hope int he resurrection of Christ, but there is also hope to find healing. Survivors of Columbine reach out to help others who have suffered from similar traumas in their lives. For example, two former students at Columbine have reached out to their classmates and started a community group that has extended far beyond just those within their former school or even within their state of Colorado. I would write and try to describe the organization that they have started, the Rebels Project, but I would just be repeating what another has already written. I came across Jon Schuppe’s article on the Rebels Project and it gave me hope.

His article can be found here: http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/columbine-15-years-later/lost-class-found-columbine-survivors-discover-new-purpose-n83436

There are five other articles as well and I hope that you, whoever the you reading this is, read them all.

I have never heard gunshots go off in my school halls, but that is because the student who was going to do so was identified and the weapon removed from his care before anything could happen. I never had to fear another bringing a gun into my school because I was near an outdoor store being held at gunpoint across the street because my school had lock-down procedures that were put into effect as soon as possible and the police were able to arrest the individual in question. I never had to feel what it was like to be in a building when a bomb went off because my high school was evacuated before the threatening call was even completed.

Not everyone has been as fortunate as I and my classmates have been. The news may not be filled with only stories of when things went wrong, but there are enough that have made me pause whenever there is any hint of it.

I have received a phone call that my sister’s children’s school was in lock-down because there was a man who’d threatened to bring his weapon to a school nearby. I have received another phone call that the elementary and middle schools near my house were in lock-down as well because an armed robbery had occurred on the same street and they were taking precautions. Nothing happened and none of the students had to be sent home either of these times, but it is because of dangers in the past and people sitting up and listening that these procedures are even in place.

I was in the 5th grade when Columbine happened. My second eldest sister was a senior in her high school, Class of 1999. It is her children who I have received phone calls regarding lock-downs. I shudder to think of a world where she died from a school shooting and her children never came to be.

It is Easter Sunday and it is a day of hope. I am more grateful than I can ever express for the hope that I have received just by knowing how preciously people are guarding their children and working to help those who have needed to survive anything.

God bless you.

Perspective

Sometimes I sit and wonder about what I’m seeing. The world has changed so much since I was a little girl that I scarcely recognize it. I’ve been on this earth less than three decades and yet if my sisters’ children were in my age because of some plot device (like time travel) then they would be very surprised with how little technology we had available for everyday use. Newspapers were still flung onto steps and the white pages were delivered at the same time as the yellow pages instead of needing to be requested.

Every morning before school started in my third grade class, I could look out across the valley I lived in from the Eastern benches and see large squares of green where farms were. Those large squares of green have steadily given way to more suburbs and roads. There are few farms still in my valley that are view-able from so great a distance. Those that do exist are scattered so that they could just as well be an equestrian or city part (both are few here as well).

My middle school is gone as well, the students temporarily transferred to another while the old one is completely demolished and then, hopefully, rebuilt. It’s boiler finally threw in its final towel and refused to be fixed after over 50 years of service. The tunnels and bomb shelters beneath the former brick behemoth having to be filled in as well in order to have a more sound foundation after years of disuse. Some of the teachers here taught families by the generation.

( Here was roll call on the first day I had Biology:

“I taught your mom and your dad and both of your parents.”

It went like this down several rows until he got to me.

“And I had all five of your sisters.”

There’s something like 11 years between the eldest of my sisters and the youngest. My parents were actually older than the teacher, but all the other parents were younger than him.)

Sending e-cards was considered too informal for any kind of social gathering and were discouraged for personal use as well because they weren’t considered ‘enough.’ Talking on the phone when having a guest over wasn’t rude and hardly anyone in my schools even knew what anime was. Google was an infant, YouTube didn’t exist and being able to purchase any songs online was the cause for scandal as the recording companies cried foul. There were chat rooms starting to become popular and online forums were starting up. Meeting people online was still considered nothing more than play time and not taken seriously unless they wanted to ‘meet in real life.’

Time spent online wasn’t real to people even as it slowly started to take up more and more of their actual time from their ‘real’ lives.

When you were bullied at school it was either face to face or behind the cupped hands of gossip. There wasn’t an online media service where you could target someone from across the country for whatever reason bullies use to justify their behavior. Hatred still existed and so did jealousy, it was just a little more like dirt in your face and snowballs hiding rocks and pine cones thrown full strength at the back of your heard and less like written victimization and the ruination of someone’s character in the online community.

Any kind of online community stayed online and didn’t bleed into daily life as much before. Networking was done face to face in the flesh and not over a screen.

There’s so much more to mention, but not enough time in which to do so.

So what will the next ten years bring for me to see and live through? Perspective is always changing.

Prompt for this: http://writegear.wordpress.com/2013/10/02/writers-block-41/comment-page-1/#comment-77