Did Anyone See This Boy?

Perhaps some readers will think, “There he goes again!”  My last post was also about guns.

But this is about guns and schools . . . and boys.  

I ask you to take a good, long look at this picture of 15 year-old Ethan Crumbley.  What do you see?  A madman?  A demented killer?  

I see a 15 year-old boy - a victim too.  To be clear, I don’t intend to equate him with the innocent children he slaughtered.  The grief of their parents and others is unimaginable.  But in all of the issues around this tragedy, no one is seeing this boy.  He is being tried as an adult, despised as an adult and accused of terrorism, as though his actions were a calculated plan to “terrorize” the school or the community.

No one is seeing this boy now and it seems likely no one saw him before.

Because I have spent so much of my life around children - as a parent, grandparent, educator and staff member in several treatment centers for children - I see adults who live difficult lives as the children they once were.  When I see homeless women and men I see small children, filled with possibility, and wonder how this came to be.    Can any of us imagine our own children destined to shiver alone under a thin blanket on a dark corner?  Every one of these humans began as a tiny child, dependent on others, and somewhere they were failed; failed by a parent or parents who were, in all likelihood, failed themselves; failed by a society that turns away from poverty, sees desperation as a character flaw, and believes the myth of meritocracy.

I ask you to remember your own childhood: the small slights that might have felt like crippling wounds; the indifference of adults who didn’t seem to see or understand you; the thoughtless or cruel peers who ignored, teased or humiliated you.  All of these experiences may seem exaggerated when viewed from the outside, but were searingly intense to you - or me.  

Look at Ethan Crumbley again.  The faint shade of pre-adolescent whiskers above his upper lip.  The lifelessness in his eyes.  Or is it defiance?  Or deep, simmering rage that could not be fully discharged, even in his explosion of unimaginable violence?  Or had he become conditioned to mask his sadness and fear behind a fierce affect?

I will always remember the boys I loved during my years of work in residential treatment facilities. Five year-old  Bobby, who had an angelic smile and blond curls.  He would swear like a drunken sailor and try to tear your face off, then collapse in your arms and sob like the little boy behind the fury.  Or 10 year-old Mark, bright as a whip with a quick fuse that put everyone and everything in his path at risk.  When he was in the “quiet room,” an odd name for a place where he was left to scream, he could peel composite tiles from the floor until his fingertips bled.  I could name a dozen more boys whom I would hold in my arms until their inner storm subsided.  These boys did everything in their power to be unloveable, yet I, and others, loved them all the more because of their pain.

It is heartbreaking that Ethan’s parents apparently thought “love” meant giving their son a semi-automatic handgun or thought supporting him meant texting “LOL” at the news that he was searching for ammunition in school.   I wonder if they hugged him before sending him off to school with a killing machine in his backpack?

It is utterly astounding that neither the school nor his parents took the glaring signs seriously.  The school’s efforts to justify their inaction are absurd.  I don’t write from inexperience.  If any student, of any age, had drawn the bloody images and written “help,” “my life is useless,” and “the world is dead,” he or she would have been removed from the school, not returned to the classroom.

I wonder if any adult in the school even noticed him.  How can any child be in that much pain and go unnoticed?  I know it may seem presumptuous, but I don’t believe that any child would unleash that kind of madness on a place where small gestures of affection were part of his day.  

Ethan Crumbley lives in a sick culture, where members of Congress threaten their colleagues with animated decapitation or carry a handgun and call a gentle Muslim colleague the “terrorist.”  Or the demented Republican House member who thought this was a “funny” holiday greeting.  

Ethan played violent video games and saw the world around him draw closer and closer to the scenarios of revenge depicted on his screen.  He is being charged with terrorism, but I suspect he felt “terrorized” every day until it all became too much to bear.  

“My life is useless.”  Who can read those words from a 15 year-old boy and not feel deeply saddened?