Keep Them Safe by Liz Flaherty

Early in the week, I dropped my teacher kids and several dozen DeRozier's donuts off at school in the morning because of vehicle malfunctions.

I admit to a love for the school campus where we live--it's been a part of my life ever since the high school was built way, way back in the last century. It's changed a lot over the years. More buildings, including what former elementary principal Don Davis used to call the castle on the hill--more athletic fields, more driveways. There are enough directional arrows that I'm almost sure I break the law every time I turn into or drive off the school grounds.

On this morning when I dropped Jim and Kari off at their respective buildings, I saw my friend Judy, who's driven a bus through a few generations, and got out to give her a hug. "I'm retiring this year," she said. I'll believe her when school starts next fall and she's not sitting in the front of a bus. I remember one time when she was substituting for another driver and one of the passengers said he liked it when Judy drove because it was "such an adventure."

Kids and teachers and backpacks were everywhere on the high school part of the campus. Even in the car I could feel the "almost there" excitement of the school year coming to an end. I loved seeing them, wondering what their summer plans are, what they want to be when they grow up. 

I've cried some at that school. Lots of times when I went there and sometimes when my kids did. Every time one of them graduated. Watching Bob Bridge and Tim DuBois's boys walk the field before football games. In 2020 when the seniors, including one of our grandboys, ran the bases in their caps and gowns. 

As I drove away from the school the other day, I found myself crying again, and praying, because I am frightened beyond all reason of people with guns who place no value on human life beyond seeing how many people they can hurt at one time.

Yes, I know, guns don't kill people, which is why we give them to people...you know, so they can do it. Their rights to be "...a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed..." do after all supersede the rights of children to reach adulthood. 

I don't know most of these kids' names, although I'm sure I know some of their parents and many of their grandparents. I don't know who's at the top of their class and who hasn't turned in any homework since kindergarten. I don't know, sitting in my car, whose language would scorch my ears and who never learned the value of please, thank you, or a dollar earned. I don't know who shops at boutiques and who combs the clearance racks and who depends on the kindness of strangers. I don't know who worries about being bullied, who bullies, and who doesn't give a damn either way. 

I don't know any of that and frankly, that morning in the school driveway and this morning as I write this, I don't care. I want them all to graduate, to run whatever bases their lives bring them, to walk the fields of whatever is their passion, and to have more adventures than their parents can bear worrying about. My prayer for them is always the same, and I cry with the fear of it not being answered.

Please, God, keep them safe.

Have a good week. Be nice to somebody.