"better Not Be Blood On My Car"

A guy got shot across the street one day during my planning period. I was just sitting at my desk typing a lesson plan and listening to Rush Limbaugh when I heard three or four shots in succession. Being on the third floor, I was in no real danger. I crouched down and looked outside the window.

People at the bus stop were pulling themselves up from the ground to which they’d dropped. The traffic continued. A few young men were running like hell in different directions. The cops arrived shortly after and set up a crime scene.

Shortly thereafter, I walked out with a buddy of mine to go for a coffee at Seven Eleven. We talked briefly with another guy from the school who was watchfully taking in the police and EMT’s doing their work. One person had been shot, but not killed.

“Better not be blood on my car,” said the onlooker. He had parked very near to where the body was being attended.

When my students arrived for the last period of the day, I thought they’d be real shaken up. I was going to ask them to write about the violence or their fears of violence in the neighborhood. I was going to see why they thought people were getting shot near their school. When they arrived, they underplayed the incident. They laughed and asked me if that was the first time I’d been so close to someone being shot. It was.

The corner store across the street has a wall adorned with gang symbols. Whichever group has their sign up without a symbol blaspheming it owns the corner. A gang counselor said he can’t count the number of times different gangs have fought over that corner. They fight over drug turf, pride and all kinds of things I don’t claim at all to understand. He’s a real strong guy who doesn’t appear to scare easily. Even he rushes in and out of the store when he goes in for a burger. No eye contact – just in and out – he says.

I know enough about the drug war to see that it’s dehumanizing. Every day I coach my athletes out on the track, we are accompanied by the site of a police helicopter circling overhead. Cop cars often zoom down the street from where we do stretching and push-ups.

I know it might not be safe, but I still like to run my athletes four blocks over to a local park where we can work out on the soft wooded trails.