All right, I watch the news, like a lot of people do, and like many others I don’t always like what I read or hear in the news. It’s never a comforting feeling to see the worst of what our society has to offer displayed across, in my case, 53 inches in vivid color. So the other day I’m checking up on my local Fox news site in DFW, and I find a story about a boy in a Dallas school who has been suspended for bringing a toy gun to school. Apparently the gun was very small and looked more like it was alien in design, it was also only a couple of inches big.

The school suspended the boy for three days and sent home a copy of the zero tolerance policy for his mother to read and understand why he was sent home. I was of course a little upset about from the second I started reading because on the news site their heading for the story included the fact that we’re talking about a 4-year-old child.

I can’t remember the last time I felt safe around a four year old with a gun, like he can even shoot the gun anyways, how do you freak out so bad about a toy gun that I could completely conceal in my fifth pocket on my levy’s? It’s insane to suspend a four year old for three days, what is it going to teach him? Screw up and go home? Now I know many parents out there believe they would make it hell for him at home so he wouldn’t get that idea, but I’ll tell you all something right now. When I was a kid there a point in my life when I got a well-deserved spanking with a belt almost every day and I still enjoyed every second.

So I sat and thought about it all at an opportune time, while in the bathroom, and it makes sense to me to do something to instill the right and wrong of it all into this kid, but to send him home for three days isn’t it. Why would that be the trick? I mean aside from this particular case since the news station was called and started asking questions forcing the school to shorten the suspension to a half day, it became such a big deal that it actually had the desired effect on him, but how often is this going to happen, really.

Now I’ve always thought it was easier than people thought to keep a child inline without using any form of abuse at all and because I was a teenager or just not a parent I was always pushed aside while my opinion was worth shit instantly, well now I am a parent and I have a two year old who is very good at getting to things she shouldn’t, she is after all my daughter, I expect much, much more from her over the years. But again how hard is it really to teach a child right from wrong, are we really so busy that we can’t take the time to remain ultimately consistent above anything else, I mean that is the only way a child learns anyways is by a steady example that doesn’t change.

In this case I see a mother on my TV that I feel is probably doing the best she can given that she appears to be a single parent who obviously works, I used to be that little kid so I can relate to the situation. I still knew right from wrong even though my mother worked all the time to keep food on the table, the schools I went to were in no better shape than the one this kid goes to, and to further stretch my point I knew very well that if I was going to do something wrong, don’t get caught. It was a given for me my whole life, I still knew what to do and what not to do and sometimes I listened to what I was told to do and others I didn’t, it’s that simple.

I made a choice every time to do the wrong thing and if I wasn’t careful enough not to get caught then I was punished. It was due to very consistent surroundings with my behavior that made the difference, and I will admit that my mother babied the hell out of me, she let me get away with so much crap when I was young, and by the time I started doing bigger and better things as a teenager she had little she could actually do to stop me. The trouble I was getting into was bigger than just a parental reprimand, she tried to scare me out of some of the stuff, she tried to convince me that it would be her who got in trouble for what I was doing, I just got better at not getting caught.

So why is this four-year-old boy actually thinking it’s a good idea to take any kind of gun to school post Columbine? Then add to it what happened at Virginia Tech this year, the subject has been definitely been discussed, unless of course that parent feels it’s better to keep such things away from her small child.

My take on this issue is simple, I don’t want my daughter to be subjected to the bloody details of it all until she is ready and able to deal with it maturely, but I also don’t want her thinking life is peachy and everything is just fine all of the time. I’m not raising an illusionist; I’m raising a person who will one day contribute to this world in whatever way she chooses. Those are things she needs to understand, contribution, work, choice, and above all else she needs to understand reality. Is it not reality that tells us we cannot fly without wings? I’m thankful for that and I want her to know exactly what wings are so she knows when she can fly and when she can’t.

You know I actually plan on her being more intelligent than I was when she gets to be four, only with her there won’t be anyone at home calling her fat for 20 pounds, or calling little dumbshit just because, I had that growing up and it limited my abilities to do many things. Mostly it made me care too much about what others thought about me, which stayed with me all through my high school years, which I didn’t attend thanks to such wonderful gifts.

I can only imagine what will come of my daughter with all the simple things I can teach her, hell if I turned my fear of what others thought about me into a way to read other people; then imagine what she’ll be able to do without having such an obscene obstacle in her way. In the meantime I hope the next kid who brings a toy gun to school brings a fine home with him for his parents for not taking care of the matter before hand. It’s not hard to guess that a little boy this day in age is going to try to bring his toys to school.

Sorry for the rant, feeling about as random as the lottery right now.