WELL NOT IN OUR TOWN. You just dont' understand. Up until yesterday, New Holland was Pleasantville. No high school shootings. Very few prostitues. ZERO Starbucks. Growing up, it was simultaneously the safest and most dreadfully boring burg in the world. We could literally sit IN THE STREET all night and do nothing. We'd lounge in the gutters with our acoustic guitars and singe songs like drunken house cats all summer long (ask Matt...its true). Cars would drive around us and honk happily as if to say "hey you little lazy bastards, keep up the good work" The elderly walked defiantly down the darkest streets with no fear whatsoever. Even the police were unthreatening...so unthreatening that if they had to get out of their cars to chase you, the chase was over. I'm SERIOUS, we could be standing in a field forty feet from the cruiser and we knew that as long as we were out of arms reach, we were okay.
But yesterday morning, that little teenage utopia was shattered. The facts are still iffy and the shooter is still at large...but apparently a scorned gentleman (and I use that term loosely) decided to fill his recently ex-girlfriend with a few rounds of revenge. He literally gunned her down outside her business much to the chagrin of various onlookers. He also took it upon himself to murder her 13 year old son. As I said before, I'm not a Liberal or Conservative. I'm one of those special folks walking the tightrope high above the party pool. Everyone once in a while I lose my balance and fall towards the Conservative (example: saying the pledge of allegiance in class) or the Liberal (hating George Bush). I am not an advocate of the death penalty but anyone who takes a kid's life deserves a special kind of punishment. The kind where crazy little jack russel terriers slowly eat your liver and spleen while you're forced to watch Dennis Miller on Monday Night Football.
But here is where the problems arise. The cops in my little town that was once so serene and almost Mayberry-ish are now going to get a very huge stick up their asses. No longer will kids be able to hang out in the gutters. No longer will old folks strut down main street like they own the joint. Parents will be rushing their children inside (and infront of the biggest root of evil...the television) as soon as the sun goes down. The kids will get stuck watching reality TV, which is anything but real. They'll be taught how NOT to deal with people on a personal level. They start downloading animal porn and sending hate mail to large consumer businesses cause they just have nothing better to do.
So I say to you, children of New Holland, go BACK to the gutters. Old folks, TAKE BACK THE NIGHT. Don't let the vermine that threaten to change our way of life have their way. Let the police know that its still okay to stay in their cruisers...and for God's sake, put the guns away.
posted by Michael Witmer @ Tuesday, February 17, 2004
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