High School is not what it used to be

In high school I worried about whether or not some boy liked me as much as I liked him. I worried about getting a ride to school from Candace so I wouldn't have to ride the bus. I worried about whether or not Diane was mad at me for some stupid reason. I never worried about some classmate shooting me.

There's been another school shooting. Another one.

I'm not sure when the whole idea of this came about. I'm unclear how it went from beating up someone who you didn't like or weren't friends with to deciding to shoot them. Even more so, shoot them and those who just happen to be standing around them when you decide to shoot. What happened to change that?

I realize that when the media presents these stories they are usually accompanied by statements that suggest that the shooter was bullied by classmates and felt that there was no other choice. There were bullies in my day too. Are they that much worse that shooting is the only way out? And I can't help but ask what's going on in this child's home that prevents their family from knowing how bad it is at school.

I've also noticed that none of these shooters seem to be girls. What's going on between girls and boys? Do teenaged girls handle bullying differently than boys? Do teenaged girls have some kind of emotional or mental capacity to handle bullying in a better way than boys?

I don't know that I'll ever have answers to the questions. All I know is that more children are dead.