Nothing Makes Sense Anymore: We All Need Help

"I'm done with Baltimore."
-- Witness

Everyday during school I flip through my usual website roster just to keep abreast of what's going on in the world. I check espn.com to see what's going on in the football and college basketball, the Orioles while they're still above 500 which I'm surprised they are so late into April, and whatever else ESPN tells me I should be paying attention to. I check cnn.com to see if anything terrible has happened while I was sleeping, then I check the BBC Americas page to get a more realistic view of things. Then, I take a deep breath, try to mentally prepare myself and hope for the best as I check the website that is literally closest to home, baltimoresun.com.

My God, what is the world coming to. It's getting so I can't even look at the Baltimore news anymore without wanting to just pack up all my shit and move as far away as I can. It's not just Baltimore in all fairness, just check the US news section on CNN if you don't believe me, but damned if Baltimore isn't making it that much worse. For the second consecutive day I was hit first thing in the morning with a story about a teenager who should have been in school getting caught on the wrong end of a firearm. Yesterday morning it was a 14 year old girl getting shot in a rowhouse in east Baltimore, allegedly by an 18 year old suspect.

"The victim was identified as Shawndreta Griffin of the 1900 block of McCulloh St., a seventh-grader at Booker T. Washington Middle School. The shooting occurred after 9 a.m. in the 1900 block of N. Patterson Park Ave., where several dilapidated houses have been demolished.

Neighbors and passers-by gathered behind yellow crime-scene tape as about 25 police cadets searched vacant lots and alleys for the weapon police believe was used in the shooting.

Malachi Williams Jr., who was doing construction work in a car wash nearby, said he had seen six or seven children being led by police officers out of the rowhouse and into vehicles."

I remember when I was little watching my grandmother as she watched the news and shake her head in sorrowful disbelief. I wondered to myself, how can she even bring herself to care? She doesn't know these people, and in my childlike mind they seemed so far removed from my own life as to not even be a part of reality. As I have grown older, I think her view is beginning to come into focus for me. This shit is terrible. Even in a terrible story like this is more terrible shit lying between the lines. What the fuck is a seventh grader doing at home at 9 in the morning on a Monday? And her 18 year old shooter, what? Who gets into violent disputes before they're even done serving breakfast at McDonald's?

Today I checked hoping to maybe see something hopeful on the front page, nope, wrong.

Boy, 15, Shot in Face in West Baltimore. Police swarm neighborhood; Officer was shot in same area yesterday.

"A 15-year-old boy was shot in the face about 9:30 a.m. today in West Baltimore, and three schools in the area were placed on lockdown, according to city police and city school officials. The victim is likely to recover, a police spokeswoman said."

9:30 am, really? Not that anytime is a good time to get shot in the face, but for real. What is possibly going on that you've already resorted gun violence at 9:30 am? There's no logical justification for it. Life is just getting beyond reason, and that's how you know something really, really radical is going to happen in the near future that's going to change everything, because it pretty much has to.
A long time ago I used to be anti-guns, anti-death penalty, all of that shit, and I had my justification. The death penalty just seems inherently hypocritical to me, and I can't resolve that philosphical gap in my own mind to this day, but somewhere along the line philosophy gets driven off the road by practicality. Some people are just too much to be allowed to run loose in the world, even within the confines of the prison system. And here are my two cents on an issue I believe the Supreme Court will soon be hearing this term; the death penalty should not be reserved for those convicted of homicide. These people who like molesting kids are far more deserving of it in my opinion but that's a whole other topic.
Everybody is simply going apeshit. I don't know if it's all the greasy food and preservatives, if it's the repetitive skull numbing music, if it's Dr. Phil's fault or what, but something is going wrong, big time, and we all just seem to be far too accepting of it.
I used to be opposed to owning guns but I'm certainly not anymore, because they have guns, and they are crazy. And every time I leave my bedroom, I'm entering their domain where apparently anything can happen first thing in the morning. If this is the situation then just like Omar said, "The game is out there, and it's play or get played." But what kind of fucked up shit is this to have to deal with. A world where everybody has guns? Guns that have triggers, and all it takes is an index finger to pull it, and when you pull it a bullet flies out. A bullet is a piece of metal, rounded and shaped to fly through the air, spiraling for accuracy, and sometimes hollowed out so that when they reach your target, they collapse broadening and roughening their piercing end so that they won't exit the target, but will stay inside piercing and tearing tissue and vital organs, which will render your target seriously incapacitated, if not mortally wounded. And why you might ask is this the case? Who knows, but apparently you can piss people off enough before the suns even all the way out of bed for them to point one of these things at you and let fly.
This is craziness. Bill of rights enthusiasts will tell you that it's their right to bear arms and that they understand how to use them and would only do so if they felt threatened. I personally take the Seinfeld view on this, "People with guns don't understand. That's why they get guns, too many misunderstandings." Yet, while I hold this belief, I certainly don't want to be the one caught naked when everybody outside has all their clothes on, and an angry look on their face. What's a man to do? Stop reading the news maybe. At least then you won't see it coming.
I think the biggest mistake we all make is seeing this stuff happen, and watching the news like it's a documentary on Aids in Africa, like it will never affect us. The other day I was sitting outside of my house in Carlisle, PA, miles away from anything of significance to people who have grown up in a real city. I was double parked for convenience, but the street was wide enough for two cars to fit through even with cars parked along both curbs. Within 2 minutes, two people drove by honking their horns, one of them slowed down as they drove by to peer into the car and see who was there, as if to say "What is your problem, city boy?" The second guy even pulled over on the other side of the street, got out of his car leered over to try and scare us off I suppose. I remember thinking; these poor idiots have no idea what's going on in the world. I felt this way because I know for a fact, that just less than an hour and change south of Carlisle, there is a city where one can find themself rendered lifeless for committing such an act. Stopping and looking into cars at people you don't know is an action that can cost you your life in many parts of this fascinating country, but these people only see and hear about that on the news if at all. The news is no barrier to reality, I just hope these people don't carry their antiquated country habits too far into modern territory. God knows what will happen when these two borders eventually meet.