Little Pink Houses

When Matt and I were dating, I ended up at his high school one weekend to serve as a judge in a creative problem solving competition.  He was up in Nashville, and I was in his hometown, walking the hallowed halls where he matriculated.

When I arrived, I was told to check in at the Day Care Center.

His high school has a day care where students can keep their kiddos during the day.  In return for childcare, they spend one period a day there where they work and learn child care skills.

I was blown away by this, and I told Matt that night what a progressive idea that was.  He asked what the girls in my school who got pregnant did with their kids.

I said, "Girls at my school didn't get pregnant." 

He replied, "Girls at your school didn't stay pregnant."

And to be fair, he probably has a point.  It's statistically improbable that somebody in my high school didn't get pregnant in the four years I was there.  I can tell you that people had sex.  Anecdotally, empirically - people had sex at Roswell High School*.

Our mascot was the Hornet.  Here are two hornets, mating.

And I realize how elitist what I said probably sounded.  I get it - but it was 15 years ago, at least, and I feel bad about it.

But I grew up in a middle class suburb where bad things don't happen.

That's not entirely true.  Bad things happened.  One of my classmates was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma our senior year.  Went to prom in a wig.  That said, she survived and lives in Colorado with her husband and gorgeous kids.

That's it.  That's the bad thing that happened to our class.

So you can imagine my surprise the other day when I learned that two teenagers were found shot, dead - murdered behind a grocery store not a tenth of a mile from my high school.  One was a student at my high school - the other, at a school in a different county.  They were seventeen.  About to start their senior years.

I read the story in the Atlanta Journal Constitution (online) and recognized the name of the detective - he's the younger brother of a guy I grew up with.  A fair number of people who grew up in the area stayed put. The fact that I didn't is something of a surprise to me.

They arrested a suspect and he's in jail now.  He has a history of mental illness.  He had a gun.

Y'all know how I feel about guns.  Not really the point.  The point here is that bad things happen.

Even to nice kids from nice neighborhoods.  And by the way, getting pregnant doesn't mean you're not a nice kid.  It just means that you're a nice kid who had a kid.

Be nice to yourself.  And to others.


*In re-reading this, I want to clarify - I'm not saying people had sex AT SCHOOL (although, it's possible, even probable).  I just mean that students of RHS were having sex.  Where?  Hell, I don't know.  Not my business.