School Shooting Stencil

People remember where they were when JFK was assassinated. Or on 9/11. When the NIU shootings happened, I remember sitting alone in a big Illini Media newsroom overlooking Green Street. Cell-phone plastered to my ear, I scribbled quotes on the back of a crinkled Potbelly's receipt with the first pen I could find: a red one.

Nick sounded stunned, but alive. As I madly noted his words, my thoughts drifted back to the nights spent jamming in his aunt's basement. He used to beat the drums so hard that the skins warped. We played at grad parties, even recorded a lousy five-song album. But college was the end of the band. I went to Champaign. He went to NIU. We left our friendship in high school.

Then the shootings happened. Suddenly, breaking through the frozen cellular network to hear his voice was the most important thing in the world. But whether that was because I regretted two years of lax communication or because I needed his perspective for the story slotted for tomorrow's paper, I wasn't sure.

The next day, the aftermath, my story's headline read, "Connected." I had quoted Nick: "You go to college to be someone, then this happens."

Since, school shootings as a phenomenon of my lifetime have wedged themselves like a chink of ice in my heart, my mind, my subconsciousness. Thus the opposing revolvers morphed into question marks that form the shape of a heart. I could go on for paragraphs about what I see in it. But that would be antithetical to my intent. In addition to a heart, the interior forms a Rorschach inkblot pattern. I've read a lot about NIU and school shootings in general. I've written a lot about it. I've thought even more about it. I've interviewed police men, clinical psychologists, students, the associate chancellor, the student body president. And I've come to the following conclusions:

1. Police responded to the NIU tragedy with poise, intensity and calmness. They deserve our thanks.

2. We at the University of Illinois are as prepared as we can be, our police as sharp as humans in uniform can be.

3. No one really understands school shootings. And there is no emotional scale, metaphor or stencil to measure the suffering victims endure.

Thus, the design as a whole symbolizes, if anything, the disconnect between assumptions and reality; between safety and peril; between the signifier and the signified.

I did decide to spray-paint it on a Booze News article as a satirical stab at dark humor. For those infrequent readers, The Booze News glorifies the parties, sex, alcoholic excess. It is one of my guilty pleasures, partially because it is a symbol of our safety and luck. We can drink the night away, earn a story or two about being idiots because all our other more primal needs -- food, clothing, shelter, education, money, safety -- are satisfied. Or so we think.

Finally, the quote "They Started It" is from Jodi Picoult's novel Nineteen Minutes. It is what the shooter says is his excuse for shooting. The shooter is the magnet of constant bullying (hyperbolized a bit in novel form, I think) and so he eventually snaps in the form of a barrage of bullets directed at those who have made his life a living hell.

It's a reminder of the power of kindness we all posses and all use, I fear, too little. Who knows. A small smile, a handshake, positive reinforcement, a hug -- that's really all that matters. Our hearts can flutter to unimagined heights on the wings of love or be shattered in an act of sudden violence. And while some things spin on the whim of randomness, the destiny of our lives is contingent on the quantity of our love. Give a little, get a little. Ying and yang. Do you see why the stencil is balanced in opposing symmetry of red and white?