#5: In the End, We'll All Become Stories.

The sour truth is that I shouldn't have known about David.  Hell, I didn't even remember his name until it showed up in an e-mail from the event organizer, asking all of us if we remember being assigned to him during the Project Bundle-Up event a few weeks ago.  This was my second year at the event, and while the third-person view of selfishly I enjoyed watching a bunch of little kids just ooze exuberance over getting brand new coats and hats...items that I would easily take for granted.

*I* wasn't even assigned to him.  The full extent of my experience with David involved a group photo and mindless conversation on the school bus, meant mostly to keep the kids docile until more responsible people showed up to take them away.  He was...boisterous.  Loud, but in a friendly way.  He was built like me at that age, except more extroverted.

The first e-mail was asking who had worked with David.  The second was the group photo with a description of the boy.

The third was a forwarded e-mail from The Salvation Army, explaining that he had died.

Allegheny County police said they believe someone knocked at the family’s door Sunday night, and when it was opened, shots were fired inside the home.

David lived in Mt. Oliver, a neighborhood that City-Data.com concluded is well above average in all crime activity, with a crime index of 754.2 against the national average of 289.6.  In terms of population density, Mt. Oliver is at least two times as dangerous as New York City.  David and his brother weren't actively contributing to the crime problem that night.  They were in their living room, playing video games, when someone knocked at the door.  David's brother answered, and moments later both boys were shot...David was pronounced dead on arrival by the examiner.

She was one of more than a dozen shocked neighbors and friends who aimlessly milled up and down the street, greeted each other with hugs and tears and created a memorial of balloons, a Pittsburgh Penguins teddy bear and a prayer candle on the family’s front porch.

Everyone knew David.

Nobody knows the full story.  Maybe the older brother got mixed up with the wrong crowd, although those interviewed implied that it wasn't likely.  Maybe it was an accident.  Maybe it was just senseless violence and, in the eyes of the shooter, the victim was irrelevant.

What *I* believe regarding the truth is equally irrelevant.  In my mind...in everyone's mind, I would imagine, there's an infinitesimally small number of truths that would lead to the conclusion that an eleven year old boy deserved to die.  Zero.  I'm going to go ahead and say there are zero reasons that this is fell within line of the natural order of life and death.

 The liberal in me wants to point to this and rant about the need for more stringent gun control...that this situation was even plausible because some person that (in all likelihood) didn't have any business owning a gun managed to get his hands on one anyway.  The socialist in me wants to berate the abnormal distribution of wealth and use Mt. Oliver as a paradigm of the effects of the current social strata.  The father in me wants to beat the piss out of whoever shot these two boys.

The mother is not able to go back to the home as she is very frightened and the scene from the shootings has not been cleaned up yet.

The Sandy Hook shooting is almost three years old, but the emotions culled out by the tragedy seem to be stuck on repeat.  The Qabak village suicide bombing at a primary school.  The Franklin Regional High School stabbing.  The freedoms I had at childhood seem like negligent parenting when viewed through today's grayed-out and dismal lens.  I walked to school almost every day until I was old enough to drive.  In junior high, my walk included a mile-long stroll along the railroad tracks.  Our high school conducted exactly one locker search a year for weapons or drugs.  

Now, when my daughter asks if she can walk home from school -- a distance easily half of what I managed at her age -- I reply with "maybe when you're older" and hope she doesn't realize that I'm being purposefully vague.  Now, I'm not allowed to volunteer at her school until I am completely vetted out by the state and they have my fingerprints on file.  Now, if my daughter wants to ride her bike, she has to do it with my vigilant eyes watching...not for her to mess up, but for someone else to interfere.

“That boy knew what love was. Not only did he know what it was, he knew how to give it back tenfold,” Beth Krut, 47, of Mount Oliver said of her daughter’s friend. “You only get that from one place. You get it from your parents.”

David's face would've faded in my mind over time.  Granted, maybe it would've taken longer than usual.  The kids at Project Bundle Up ranged in behavior and demeanor, but he certainly struck out as the one that seemed the most excited to be there.  But now he's an imprint.  An example.  A cautionary tale.  A physical manifestation of the fears we all endure sporadically, but with increasing frequency as time goes by.

I want to hug my daughter, to protect her, to hide her from a world that's more unstable than ever, and tell her that I'm sorry.  I'm sorry that she's inherited this world.