So another device made to kill has killed, not surprisingly. The news picks the bones and picks the bones and picks the ever increasingly picked bones of the nothing that is known. And hearing that an eight year old child was killed, what else can I think but of my own boy at eight, now. They are wonderful people at this age, better than we deserve. A friend, a college professor from long ago, told me his favorite age was nine, that after adolescence, "our kids would come back as adulthood nine-year-olds", and I can see these days what he's getting at.
And I am going to say this, and not post it on Facebook and not share it on G+ and not tweet it or link to it in the latest long pointless comment thread about the horror. My saying it will change nothing and it's as well that nobody reads it. But I will say I say this not to diminish one iota the reality of this tragedy but because in my mind it magnifies unbearably, which is how it should feel: there is not just one child grieved because adults believed in the rightness and efficacy of devices made to kill. Wielded by soldiers, wielded by children themselves, accidentally or given them with the purpose to kill, wielded by those taught their self-sacrifice is a righteous act, dropped from planes, buried in the ground, poorly hidden in drawers. Our shame should be unending and no adult is innocent. We accept this world and the workshops that churn out the devices made to kill, if they are a secret workshop of a solitary lunatic or a well-lit factory run by friendly decent people with 401ks, roll on and do not pause a moment for the innocent ones their work will kill.
