School massacre couldn't happen here... could it?

FRIDAY, JANUARY 18: When a tragedy like the Newtown school shooting occurs, it is natural to feel compassion for the victims and gratitude that our children were not among them. 

“It couldn’t happen here, anyway,” we might say, because we don’t allow guns. 

But illegal guns do exist on the island — and they are in the hands of criminals. 

One could be bought — or stolen, as was the case with the Sandy Hook School shooter, Adam Lanza, who commandeered his own mother’s weapons before embarking on his murderous rampage. 

The unconscionable actions of one disturbed person stole the lives of 26 innocent people, including his mother.

And it is the unanswered question “why?” that prevents many of us from taking refuge in the belief that something similar could never happen here. 

Perhaps the Connecticut school shooting is about more than just gun control or even the need to better patrol the world of the mentally ill. 

People who knew Lanza described the 20-year-old as “introverted”, “withdrawn,”  “troubled” and “unwell”.

His own mother had reportedly told someone that she worried about his future.

Haven’t we all known someone like him? Do we know someone like him today?

And how have we treated them, those oddball characters who we come across at every stage of our lives?

As child I remember two children who were perceived as outcasts and treated abominably by many, including me, who thought of ourselves as superior. Most of the time the behaviour amounted to simple shunning, the ‘subtlety’ of which was not lost on those children.

At other times, we were worse; we thought it was fun to tease. You always do, don’t you, until you are on the receiving end?  

One young girl was morbidly obese. We made up a song about her. It went something like this: “Angela Plumpy, Angela Plumpy. She gets up. She falls down. Cracks the earth, whoa, whoa whoa.”

What were we thinking? What kind of miserable little gang were we? How dare we treat another human being like that? I look back now and am ashamed of our participation in such repulsive behaviour. We had to know it was wrong. Even as children how could we blind ourselves to the embarrassment and alienation that poor girl endured because of our ridicule?

Where was our compassion? We were bullies. We were shameful.

But no one stopped us — not even ourselves.

There was another little boy who came from a big family, all of whom looked like they hadn’t bathed in weeks. They had stains around their necks, which we all assumed was dirt of some kind and we had to wonder how their parents could send them to school like that. We would all stare at them as they walked to school. They saw us staring and simply carried on. Alone. Alone in the schoolyard. Alone at lunch. They were never part of any group. Never accepted. What does that do to a person? Nothing good.

I don’t know how either child turned out, what kind of adults they became or if their early experiences ended up shaping them, one way or another.

Did they steel themselves against their tormentors and become stronger by the experience? Or have they slunk through life, turning their backs on others before they could be beaten down further?

Have they retreated farther and farther away from the world that hurt them until they no longer felt a valid part of it? Are they driven by a need to avoid others or worse, punish them?

What Adam Lanza did was unforgivable, pure evil. But one cannot help but wonder, if someone had gone out of their way just a little and tried to coax him back into our world, that perhaps he might not have felt such a stranger in it and would have chosen to protect rather than destroy.

There is also the chance that nothing might have stopped him. But it is something to think about. 

Darlene McCarthy Barnfield worked as a television anchor and reporter for the NBC affiliate in Boston (WHDH) and hosted a radio talk show on Boston’s WRKO. She is now a freelance writer living in Bermuda. This is her first column for the Bermuda Sun.