I Don't Like Mondays

 On the morning of January 29th 1979 a 16 year old girl who lived across the street from the Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego California opened fire on the school as students were arriving with a .22 rifle. She killed the school Principle and a Custodian. She injured eight other Students and a Police Officer. She then barricaded herself inside the house she lived in.

A reporter for a local paper began dialing phone numbers in the neighborhood until the person dong the shooting answered. When the reporter asked why she was doing this she answered, "I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day".

Of course everything about this incident was forever and always framed in the "I don't like Mondays" context and no one really looked any further from what I can understand.

A rock and roller who heard about the incident wrote a song using "I don't like Mondays" as the title and context and framed it as insanity. It was a popular song for a while.

I think that everyone has totally misread everything about this whole thing. And let me tell you why.

A few years earlier, when I was still in grade school, during the Summer time, my then best friend and his family were out of town at the families cottage on a lake.

Now we had been friends for a few years by then. I had the run of his house pretty much. I knew every in and out plus they did not lock doors back then. None of us did.

So one night, not to long before the beginning of the school year, I went into the house and started rooting around. They had a .22 rifle and ammunition that I was after. I knew exactly where the rifle and ammo lived. Yet I could not find either.

Years later my friend told me that they had to be where I remembered them being as they never took them to the cottage.

So I eventually left and gave up on the plan that I had.

You see my plan was too kill. Because I was not safe. Not at Home and not at school and not in the streets. I had 4 friends that I hung out with. I was safe at their houses. No where else.

My plan was to start with my Step Father. And then I was going to go to school and I had a list of people that I was going to kill. I was going to keep going until the Police finally took me out. That was my plan.

And I am sure that the public and societal understanding of what I did would have been just as far off the mark as they were with this young woman a few years later.

This young lady lived poor in a home with an addicted Father after her Mother had left. It was later discovered that she also had Epilepsy and had to deal with Depression.

I grew up in addiction. Later in life I also deal with depression. I also am in Recovery from Addiction. For a long time I was Suicidal.

If I had found that rifle and ammunition, if I had been able to carry out my plan and kill, and commit Suicide by cop, would you have known these things? Would you have been able to have some understanding that everything was not as it appeared from the outside?

Or would you have thrown up your hands in disgust and wonder what was wrong with that kid (Me) that they could such horrible things? Would you have scrambled for some explanation that would have absolved you and our society of any responsibility for letting this go on? Would you have allowed yourself the luxury and comfort of the fantasy that there was no understanding of such Evil. Only condemnation and punishment.

It is much more comforting for us as a society to make sure that we have no responsibility for the evils that happen in this world. It makes us feel better about ourselves to think that these things happen in a vacuum that exists separate from us.

It is not true. And we continue to do that. The fantasy we have created to absolve ourselves is false. Yet we cling to it with all of our might. Like all of the lies we tell ourselves we tell them because it makes us feel better about who we are.

And because we tell ourselves these lies we are powerless to affect any change in our society. We have so many problems that need to be addressed, especially around our children, that we cannot ever solve because we have told ourselves stories that absolve us of responsibility. Because we are not dealing with the problem. We are dealing with a fantasy. So we are powerless to affect change.

What it comes down to is Fear. We are so afraid because we feel like we cannot affect things. So we retreat. And we tell ourselves stories that absolve us of responsibility. Because our society is ill and has been for a long time.

The only antidote to Fear is Love. We must Love each other or Die.

We must be Responsible for each other we shall fall apart completely.

We must love each other. It is the only rational act.