by Gil Templeton

Created on: March 17, 2010   Last Updated: March 18, 2010

VIOLENCE.

A Commentary

            On January 25, Lucy Meadows, a three-year old, was nabbed from the parking lot at Rivergate Mall in the middle of the day, whisked away for no reason, most probably never to be seen again.  The afternoon of February 12, a man and woman entered the First American Bank in Madison and shot a young lady, Susie Yoon, mother of two, who was standing in line to deposit the receipts from her and her husband's bait shop, and she went in critical condition to Vanderbilt Hospital.  On March 6, 2-year old Donald Cherry was fatally shot in the head by a young man who felt that he had been, let's say, screwed by the boy's father when 33 year old Mr. Cherry decided he'd run on a crack deal in the middle of the afternoon.  The young man remarked that the, well, "inconsiderate welsher" would pay more for the car window shattered by the bullet than he would have for the crack.  A small child was killed, a victim of senseless gunplay, and, more aberrant, parental atrocity.

            What the hell is going on, people?

            At exactly what point did we completely lose collective control of the asylum and turn this small Southern world of ours into a Sam Peckinpah screen test?  When did Anne Holt and Dan Miller start sounding more like Rat Patrol than the 6:00 Evening News?

            My Grandfather remembers when his idea of being nervous was the small worry of walking home from his sweetheart's house down Blair Boulevard and hoping the Simpkin's dog didn't chase him around the corner at 21st.  My mother used to fidget about me and my little brother slipping and getting stuck in the sewer drain at the bus stop.

            Nowadays we've got people, in every zip code mind you, who spend the day hoping that Timmy doesn't end up as either a poster child for "Partnership for a Drug Free America" or a pincushion for some local turf-squatters who decide to step up the excitement level of their initiation rites.  We've got car-jackings on West Tyne, noontime rapes on Batavia, bomb threats on Charlotte, kids who have been beaten like sock-puppets in Hermitage, even allegedly respectable lawyers' wives missing from Forest Hills.

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