Teach Your Children Well - About Life

So now we say goodbye to 14-year-old John Kamel, to mourn him as we have so many children before. And perhaps the saddest part is that there is nothing special about his death, nothing unique in the senselessness of the crime. Shot to death in West Palm Beach, Fla., police say, by another 14-year-old, a bully named Tronneal Mangum.

We’ve seen this story before, haven’t we? It happens all the time, kids killing kids. This is the world that we have made.

So how do we say goodbye to John Kamel? What promises do we make in his memory, what solace do we offer his parents for the death of their only child? How do we grieve, without making the act look practiced? Which, of course, it is.

Our world was not always like this. Not so long ago, children settled disputes with fists and sticks. The bad ones even used blades. And it was rough, don’t get me wrong. But you never had the fear that someone might bring a gun to school - this awful, fatal, FINAL thing and kill you over nothing.

Which is essentially what happened to John Kamel. Police say Kamel suspected Tronneal Mangum of stealing a watch from him. “Kamel wanted his watch back,” said a young witness, Lazaro Rodriguez. “He said, ‘Hey, give me my watch.’ Then boom, boom, boom.”

And Mangum walked away.

Underline that. The witnesses did not say Mangum ran away in panic at what he had done. Nor did he stand there crying and shaking with the realization that he had taken a life. No, they say he WALKED away.

What can we say to the Kamel family about a society that produces human beings like that?

Moreover, what can we tell ourselves as we watch our own children leave home in the morning? What can we say to THEM?

Perhaps we haven’t the experience to say anything. Sure, I used to have hell with bullies when I was a child. Got punched and kicked, mocked and extorted, gave up enough milk money to buy a dairy farm. But there were no guns. The ordeals I went through seem quaint and impossibly safe when viewed from a day when children play for keeps, slaying one another over trivial things.

Where’d they learn that from, you want to ask. But you already know the damning answer. It is as near as the mirror, as near as adults who murder over traffic disputes, neighborhood feuds, romantic rivalries. Death seems such a casual thing these days, violence capricious and easy, mindless rage never far from the surface.

We teach children that in our homes, show it to them in our streets, entertain them with it on television. And then are surprised when some of them become killers. Or killed.

I worry for my children. I remind them that they must stop and think, even in - ESPECIALLY IN moments of rage. So many disputes can be settled short of harsh words and harsher actions. So many arguments can be ended by just walking away. No argument is worth your life.

They listen, but I don’t know if they really HEAR over the drumbeat of popular culture and headline news that says that the worst thing you can do is back down and that the most awful sin is to appear “soft.” Many in the generation after X live by a code of misguided machismo in which reputation is everything and peace only a greeting used by the trendy and cool. I am reminded of something a songwriter once said: “I believe the children are our future.” It was meant as a promise. It sounds evermore like a threat.

Go ahead and blame rap music for that, if you want. Blame television, blame the movies, but don’t forget to blame you and me, for losing the will to fight back. For ever reaching the point where the death of a child by violence was less than a jolting thing.

How can we say goodbye to John Kamel? Perhaps the best thing we can do in his name is to pierce the numbness and FEEL again. To remember that he is not just a name in the news. He was a boy, he was a friend, he was a son, he had a life, he had dreams and he is dead. Needlessly, stupidly dead. And the least we can do in the wake of that is to suffer the pain of his loss.

And then use it. Use it in our churches and mosques, recording studios and community centers, classrooms and newsrooms, hearts and minds. Use it to talk once more to the children we have learned to fear because they are too much like us. Use it to help turn machismo toward useful pride. Use it to expect better from our children and challenge them to deliver it.

If we can say goodbye to John Kamel in this way, perhaps we will spare ourselves from saying goodbye to some other child whose name the headlines don’t yet know.

And maybe the songwriter’s words can sound like a promise again.

xxxx