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At the first glance it looked like an ordinary English assignment sitting on the Daredevil’s desk. Then I realized that this 13 year old boy who has been struggling with his parents’ divorce, has found a way to open his heart. This is his essay.
“My mom had now been married for 18 years. It seemed like everything was going fine, but my dad just had to spoil it. On September 24th 2005, a couple of weeks before my parents’ anniversary my dad was moved out of the house and into an apartment. They had decided to get a divorce. A few days earlier my mom found out that my dad had a secret admirer. It hit her when she was driving back from food shopping. She was in pain mentally and physically.
Every day my mom would get into arguments with my dad. My dad was though “shy” to admit he had pondered on another woman, and that was how it was until my mom moved him out of the house. My mom and dad were now officially “separated”.
My dream was broken. I always wanted to have the perfect life with two great parents standing there for me, when I got into trouble or when I aced a test. It seemed not from now on. Only one parent would be there for me mainly and the other only sometimes. I realized though my mom had made the right choice for her and us. Things would be much harder now and some days I would cry with tears dripping down enough to fill the Delaware canal. I was in total denial and shock for the next week.
My mom had been fighting for our custody and money. My mom had made the choice to follow my dad around the world wherever the business took him. She had been betrayed and back-stabbed. We were now alone and stranded on an island. Trying to find a way out of this mess, the only hope was to believe that everything would be all right. That is the only way to succeed. Everything started to get better. We were now breaking through!
Just a couple of days ago we got all the home equity. I felt better in my heart and really do believe and feel I’m a much better person. I have gone through a lot in my life, but this is one that would be the hardest for me to overcome, but I know I can do it. We know we had fallen for the magic trick, but we now know it was never real.”
We have all been following in disbelief and horror the news of the shooting at Virginia Tech. 33 lives have been lost and it is difficult not to ponder whether such gruesome act could have been prevented. A man who committed the violent crime was a South Korean student majoring in English. His profile fits the bill of someone who was capable of planing and executing this vile act. He was a loner whose disturbing writing landed him in the counselor’s office.
It is the chain of events from this point that is completely incomprehensible to me. How can a person who was already pegged as potentially disturbed simply walk in the gun shop and buy any weapon he chooses? Shouldn’t there at least be a black list of people who, in psychologists opinion, should not posses guns? Why aren’t there requirements to undergo a psychological evaluation before buying a gun?
With stricter gun laws, the tragedy like this one should never happen. People who use guns in their work, for sport or hunting would still be able to procure guns under stricter licencing laws. 19 year old students on a whim of a moment would not.
In the U.S.A. Cho Seung-Hui would have had more difficulty buying a bottle of wine at the local liquor store than a weapon. There is something disturbingly wrong with that scenario.
I believe that there are loner, disturbed types everywhere in the World. However, the mass shooting seems to be a U.S. phenomenon. Perhaps those in power need to admit what is the key contributing factor and reexamine the laws.
