Every Little Thing

"Don't worry about a thing
'Cause every little thing is gonna be alright..."

–Bob Marley and the Wailers, Three Little Birds

I ran into a rainbow. It appeared on my way to my weekly beach workout at Natural Bridges and I had to embrace the positive beauty of it and take a picture. And just a quickly as it lit up the cloudy sky ahead of me, it was gone.

It got me thinking about the day before at Thinking Day for local Girl Scout troops, of which our girls are part of as Brownies, the troop the Mama (what I lovingly call my wife) helped found. Unlike the recent overnight campout we did at the Beach Boardwalk, this was a gathering of local troops to celebrate different countries and cultures from around the world.

Before it started we recited the Pledge of Allegiance, I stood with my baseball hat on heart and spoke the words proudly.

However, I looked around and noticed not everyone stood, nor did they put their hands on their hearts, and the other men wearing baseball caps didn't even take them off. I thought it strange that, with such a traditional organization, its roots steeped in God and Country, only about half the adults celebrated the traditional allegiance to the flag.

That's all right, though, I thought. It's their right as Americans to celebrate however they want. It's not my place to judge either way. 

And then I moved on from it, being one to never take issue with the NFL kneeling and related activism of the past few years. If anything I supported it.

Later during the Girl Scout event, each local troop presented some brief entertainment -- singing, dancing or spoken word -- that was representative of the country they had. Our troop was Jamaica, and they sang the Bob Marley song "Three Little Birds".

There was no reference before Thinking Day started, during the event or after it, of the March For Our Lives event happening all over the world that same day. The march that was all about gun safety, gun control, violence prevention and stopping the epidemic of mass school shootings.

And there we all were, celebrating global diversity in a high school gym. I didn't have a problem of the not mentioning the march, although the Mama and I are big supporters of it and its mission. We had planned to go, and then decided not to. We had our superficial reasons, but ultimately for me it came down to the fact that our girls are still young enough not to understand the scope of the recent tragedies, or even hear about it at school, at least not enough to pique their interest to bring it up with us.

They marched with us at the Women's March, and the Science March, and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day march. We talked about those missions with them, but when it came to the March For Our Lives, we were a little marched out and wary of talking about it with them. That time will come soon enough.

Again, it doesn't mean we're not supporters of the movement. We most certainly are. We also couldn't be more proud of this generation of older kids and teens, many of whom are close to if not already at voting age. We want to make it a better world for our girls just as much as they do.

Then came an odd moment during the Girl Scout event: the troop representing the United Kingdom played the John Lennon song "Imagine" and somewhat acted out the lyrics.

"What an strange choice for an event like this," I whispered to the Mama.

"I know," she whispered back.

"I dig it, though."

And I did dig it, because the message wasn't lost on us about wanting the world to "be as one", and the fact that John Lennon was killed by gun violence on December 8, 1980. Paul McCartney was out marching that day as well, remembering his best friend, which really moved me.

Maybe that wasn't the troop's intention, but maybe it was. Either way it was yet another rainbow of hope for me, that those of us with varying cultural and political beliefs can and should make a positive difference in this world. One where we're not going to necessarily be able to stop all the tragic shootings, but where we can make it a helluva lot harder to start them.

As I watched our girls sing the Bob Marley song as best they could, all I could see were two rainbows lighting up my world, and I knew that every little thing was gonna be alright.

We Actually Can

I stared at the clear gelatinous rectangle cuboid and wondered what the hell it was. There was a series of them each within a clear plastic display case. Inside each gelatinous cuboid was what looked like dried out weeds fanned out throughout.

But that's not what it was at all. Not even close. One of the San Jose Museum of Art volunteers told us it was part of new exhibit. She pointed to the monitor along one of the walls that highlighted the shooting of guns into the gelatinous cuboids (also known as ballistic gelatin) to trap the splintered bullets in time and space. One of the points of this exhibit was that the cuboids represented human flesh and what happens to it when bullets rip through us and explode inside.

It was only a few days after the shooting tragedy in Parkland, Florida. The day before we went to the museum I had listened to the Morning Joe news program as I worked out. I listened to them talk about each of the 17 victims and highlight something special about each one. About the teachers who sacrificed themselves by wrapping their bodies around those of the scared children trying to save themselves from the shooter. The children who got out and ran for their lives.

Then I listened the mother of one of the victims imploring our president to do something to make our schools safer. That one brought tears to my eyes. If you haven't seen it, you should.

Even conservative media is calling for a change:

"It is time for conservatives to embrace our new reality: today’s violence-prone society makes ownership of high-powered rapid-fire guns too dangerous."

I'm writing this because my wife and I care about the safety of our children first and foremost. There have been 1,600 mass shootings in America since Sandy Hook five years ago (that's about 4 victims or more on the average per shooting). Unfortunately our elected officials have done little to nothing to help stem the violence. And our children are dying.

We're supposed to be better than this. Aren't we? This isn't the other person's problem. This isn't a partisan problem. It's an American problem -- from our communities to state and federal government. Yes, we can and should choose more violence-free shows and media to consume for ourselves and our children. Yes, we can and should also choose how raise and empower our children with awareness and violence prevention.

On the other hand, California may have some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country, but damn if you can't still own an assault rifle and a whole lotta ammunition. Even my father, a retired police detective who passed away in 2012, who owned many guns himself, never agreed with the growing proliferation of assault rifles in this country. He didn't like regulation much either, but knew that something had to give somewhere for the average citizen.

And unfortunately that give continues to be us and our children. Which is why on the way to the San Jose Museum of Art referenced above, the Mama (what I lovingly call my wife) and I discussed as discretely as we could our safety plans and whether or not our girls' school was prepared for such a tragedy, while the girls listened to a Wow in the World podcast in the backseat. Even though we live in a community that appears to be much less likely to have a shooting like Parkland, the fact remains that this killing can occur anywhere at anytime.

Thankfully our school has an emergency active shooter safety plan (and we hope yours does, too). We discussed it and what would happen if our girls were out on the playground and something like this happened. Would they remember their Kidpower basics about safety first and run away and hide from harms way if they could? Would they remember to get under and stay under their desks if trapped in their classroom? Our girls haven't brought up what happened to us, but we're sure the older kids are talking about it, and we need to talk with them about it.

Ballistic gelatin is much more forgiving than human flesh. I'd bet we have much more rigorous regulation around the production of it than we do regulating the proliferation of assault rifles and exploding ammunition, guns and ammo that most of us would never touch in our lives, even with 30-40+ percent gun ownership in America.

I don't want to take anyone's gun ownership away (and couldn't even if I wanted to), but I don't have a problem pressuring state and federal elected officials to make it a much more rigorous process for you to own one and to purchase ammunition; if you're a serious and safe hunter or sports shooter you'll jump through the friggin' hoops to shoot. But making it easier for people with mental illnesses to purchase a gun sure as hell didn't help us make our country safer. And arming our teachers and administrators is also not a solution to help prevent this unnecessary violence.

After the Mama and I talked about our safety plans and what we would need to discuss with our girls, I couldn't help by helplessly imagine our children running for their lives and us not being able to do anything about it.

The good news is that we actually can.