It's My Birthday and I'll Rant if I Want To

I didn’t really have any intentions of writing anything about the Virginia Tech murders. I don’t know anyone there, and didn’t have anything to say that I didn’t feel was already adequately covered by the thousands of other sources that I’d seen and heard about the murders from. This morning I read Tim’s blog and the article that he linked to, and my “comment” just kind of grew into a post. So for what it’s worth this is my two cents. I’d like to state that I think that what happened is horrific and tragic, and I’m really glad it didn’t happen to me, but it’s not the worst thing that has ever happened. If that statement upset you, then you may want to stop reading. I have a dark sense of humor, and although there is nothing at all funny about 33 deaths, I might say something that offends.

Okay so working backwards through time, yesterday Jeff and I heard someone on the radio referring to the surviving students as heroes. What the hell? As Jeff pointed out this is quite the change from previous definitions of heroism. Hero: one noted for acts of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed their own life. So now to be a hero I can just not get killed? I guess I’m pretty freakin’ heroic then, because I’m 30 today so that’s 10,950 days that I’ve managed to not get shot in. Go me. And you know what, go you. Cause if you’re reading my blog I bet you haven’t been killed yet either.

Then we get to the part where I was just plain disgusted. Monday afternoon on the way home we listened to an NPR story about the memorial service held that morning at the school, and it was creepy. 32 people were murdered, they were shot and they died. In remembrance of them someone at the school thought it would be a good idea to ring a 850 lb brass bell and let fly a white balloon, 32 times… I listened to this story and the sound of the bell, and my brain spat out a correlation between bell and gun, and balloon and soul. If I had been there I would have had to leave, that’s just … ugh. This of course leads my warped brain onto the movie It’s a Wonderful Life. I’m sure you can start to make the same leaps that I did, but at least you don’t have to yell at your radio. How could they have thought about this for more than 5 seconds and not thought that maybe it wasn’t a great idea? For the love of Pete, when I die please don’t reenact the way that I died using poetic metaphors.