A massacre through a child's eyes.

This post describes how one of these shootings looks to a child. Nothing has been changed.

i was in second grade. it was another catholic school, but i don't remember the name. it wasn't one we were super-familiar with, like queen of heaven. the gunman went into that school's second-grade classroom and shot and killed the priest who was there and shot and wounded the teacher, who was miss flynn, who became my 7th grade pre-algebra teacher. we stopped what we were doing and prayed for them--it was awfully close to home, since we were in second grade, and those other kids were in second grade. we were all horrified to think how we'd feel if someone had come in and shot sister virginia and one of our beloved priests. i don't recall there being a nun; are you sure?

when we met miss flynn, she had a brace on her right arm ... we could still see the bullet hole's scar if we looked carefully ... and she had to write (poorly) with her left hand. she was one tough hombre, and she wasn't even a man. she had a coarse voice and was often seen (every chance she got but not inside the classrooms or lunchroom, of course) with a cigarette hanging out of one side of her mouth, flapping up and down as she spoke. she swaggered when she walked, elbows out. she wore dresses, but they never looked appropriate on her--like she was trying to fit in but couldn't quite. as a kid, i figured that all that toughness was her still fighting/hiding all that fear from having been shot (i didn't know what a lesbian was; for all i know, she really was one ... the kind of woman who has more testosterone in her little finger than an average man has in his whole body). one time, before we'd even had her teach us yet, we heard her yelling in her room as we were across the hall in our room ... and her room's door crashed open, and she strode through, carrying one of the biggest boys in her class, wood-and-metal desk and all. i knew the kid, a big blonde boy ... he was no troublemaker, and we couldn't figure out what he'd done to piss her off to that degree ... he was scared shitless ... she was still screaming at him ... and she dumped him, desk and all, out in the hall with a bang ... yelled at him some more, strode back into her classroom, and slammed the door behind her. our teacher, sister dorothy, i think, had the balls to go in after her and, i imagine, make sure everything was ok (and perhaps tell her not to go making any more scenes like that, who knows? - because she never did anything like it again). i think she talked to the blonde boy on her way back and comforted him--that was what it looked like to us because i saw the boy's terrified face relax as she spoke to him. we were silent as church-mice waiting for her to get back. and we all knew we'd better never ever piss off miss flynn once she did start teaching us (we had her for the next period).