Someplace in America, we wait and wonder where will it happen next, where will we no longer hear the words from a child asking, “Would you like to try a taste of my mud pies?” “When are we going out to play pitch and catch?” “I can’t wait to grow up and be a teacher (or doctor, marine biologist or a baseball star).”
Someplace in the United States of America, children will miss out on the pleasures of life and growing old because we have other priorities that are much more important. Grandparents will be deprived of saying, “Wow, you must have grown a foot since I last saw you” because those are unimportant novelties of life that we supposedly enjoy.
No dance rehearsals, no ballgames to cheer, no trips to amusement parks, nothing simple like a walk in the park. For those that must endure this unspeakable misery, the short time they were given together will seem like a flash in time, much like that old saying that time just seems to fly somehow when you’re having fun.
The most frustrating feeling is that those who possess the power to at least mitigate some of these happenings choose to do nothing and resort to adhering a label to those that suggest a change, calling them “gun grabbers.” No, we are not gun grabbers, but rather we are child huggers who just want each child who enters a school to go home at the end of the day without worry during his time between entrance and exit.
All across America, there are four-legged friends waiting and wondering what happened to my best friend, and as they wait, I’m wondering how many have to die before we dispense of that gun grabber term and act in a responsible way.
We no longer walk into a restaurant, a mall or even a church and feel as free as we once did because we have chosen “free dumb” over “freedom” — the freedom for every child to sit worry-free and ask, “Would you like to try one of my mud pies?”
Charles Thomas
Lima
