It’s an inherited ritual. As a kid, I too climbed into my parents’ bed as they watched the local news hoping to delay the inevitable bedtime I now ironically crave the second my eyes open for the day. The absolute luxury of having a TV in your room was something reserved for adults, making their bed the best seat in the house. The headlines were full of politics, war and scandal but never of children being shot in their classrooms. I was safe in my world of Strawberry Shortcake and Lisa Frank.

We don’t watch the news anymore. No Robin Roberts or Mary Nickles starting my day, Alexa isn’t asked to play the morning headlines and NPR doesn’t stream while I pack lunches; instead, my playlist consists of my husband’s morning meetings, swapping the voices of reporters for monotone engineers.

It’s all just gotten too real, too close with tragic headlines that could happen right in my own neighborhood. The first day of school was marred by another school shooting which took two young lives and scarred thousands more who thought it was just another day. Those parents sent their kids to school in a building they thought was secure. I watched news clips of mothers who look like me pulling off their shiny loafers to run faster toward their endangered children. She thought it would be a normal day that ended with her watching the local news; instead, her life is the news.

My kids head into a building with bulletproof glass, panic alarms and armed “faculty.” I don’t want them to go to school right after watching news stories of dead babies, sobbing parents and traumatized police. I can’t fathom how my children’s teachers feel as they trapse into work hours after a school mass shooting. The weight of educating our children is enough; imagine being asked to take a bullet like you’re on the Secret Service.

School children are in drill season — they practice the standard fire drill or earthquake drill, but now we’ve added in the shooting drill where kids stack desks against the door, huddle in a corner and make inappropriate jokes about being shot. It’s all they can do to avoid the actual reality of the growing statistics of school shootings. They see how quickly their lives can become a headline each time they pull on the door handle to school.  

In September of 1999, I started high school four months after the Columbine Massacre where 13 kids my age were murdered in class. While pundits debated the cause, blaming music, video games, goth culture and divorce, us kids were asked to go sit in a classroom like the ones we saw in the CCTV footage playing round-the-clock on CNN. On my first day of health class, someone in the hallway popped balloons taped to the wall. I wasn’t the only student to hit the floor. We didn’t need a drill. I suspect, like me, those kids watched the news. Turns out, it’s not music, video games or black trench coats; it’s mental illness and gun access.

Since the Columbine shooting, more than 500 students from kindergarten to 12th grade died in school shootings in the United States with about 1,100 being injured. Now we have school districts asking for double-digit tax increases to add more security to buildings to stem the death. Fingers crossed this works; that’s about all we have because the prayers sure aren’t solving the problem.

There’s nothing I can do to change the harsh reality that our society is OK with some kids dying if it means we get to keep the status quo on guns. The year of Sandy Hook saw no meaningful action on gun laws. That’s when I realized the only protection I can offer my children is ignorance. 

Mornings are a lot quieter now, filled with the ordinary sounds of breakfast and backpacks instead of breaking news. My kids send each other memes and reels before school, laughing in the safety of our kitchen. Maybe that ignorance really is bliss. Because in a world where children become headlines, their lives a question of politics and “owning” the other party, it sounds nice to keep my head in the sand to stop me from screaming.