Give a Boy a Gun #5

Give a Boy a Gun by Todd Strasser, may have been one of the best books I read in high school. I'll be honest it is not for the weak hearted. It is a very intense and graphic novel, and really gave me the creeps the whole time I was reading it. It really makes you think about a variety of things like, bullying, gun control, Columbine, and today's youth. I don't believe we have a big bullying issue at Deerfield, but it certainly does happen, and probably more so in other schools. It happens all too often and I never really paid any attention to it. During our Wednesday homeroom discussions, every time we talked about bullying, my homeroom would have the same reaction, "Not this again." We talked about it a lot, and I guess we didn't really see the point. We want to eliminate the chances of something like this ever happening, and stop suicide from happening as well. That's why we talked about it so much. And after reading this book it kind of puts things into perspective. We talked about gun control a little bit during class, and I still feel the same way about guns. I don't think they should be legal in anyway shape or form. They only thing they bring is death. It is scary to think that things like this may very well happen in real life, and truth be told we could see it multiple times in the future. Give a Boy a Gun was a fantastic book and I would recommend it to anyone. I think I'll definitely be more aware to bullying, and I think I'll always have the same stance on gun control.

Give a Boy a Gun #4

As they move through high school we learn more and more about the two. We find out that Gary liked to build things. He would build Legos robots and would program them, like they had a mind of their own. We also find out that during the school shooting, Gary and Brendan had pipe bombs on the doors so people could not get out if they tried. "You hear the police reports about how well constructed and intricate those pipe bombs were. I guarantee you, that was Gary's work," one of his friends said in an interview. Now we are at the part of the book called "The Day it Happened." Many of the people interviewed talked about how surreal it was. Gary and Brendan boobie trapped the doors and when they got into the gym chained the doors shut. Students remember being told to move to the middle of the gym and lay face first with their hands on their head. The first person shot was a teacher who was trying to get the boys to stop. He was not killed however. Gary and Brendan started putting zip ties around some people's hands. Sam Flach, who Brendan in a previous email to Gary said he would kill, was one of the first to be zip tied. Brendan didn't kill him but did break a couple of his ribs. According to the people interviewed, they had everything planned out perfectly. They even brought food and drinks for themselves along with flashlights. They didn't want to kill everyone, they wanted people to suffer. They shot Sam Flech in both knees so they could cripple him. Eventually a negotiator came on. Soon after, Brendan's parents came on the loud speaker trying to plead with him and so did Gary's mom. Gary and Brendan then found out that one of their close friends was in the gym, and when they found out Gary wanted to talk to Brendan. However, this made Brendan furious because Gary didn't want to stick to the plan. Gary shut down and didn't know what to do. He eventually sat down and shot himself. As Brendan was walking over to Gary's body, a kid tackled Brendan and others followed beating him into a coma.

Give a Boy a Gun #3

As the book moves on, you get to see more and more of both Gary's and Brendan's suicide notes. In Gary's suicide note, he apologizes to his mother for the pain he is putting her though. He tells her she must move on and that he wishes he could be with her, but he is "at the point of no return." Gary's suicide note is way more different than Brendan's. Brendan is mad at the world in his note. He bashes the teachers and the parents of the town saying they are a huge reason for this. That the parents did a horrible job raising their kids and that kids are not safe at high school when they are a little different. "Well, screw you. Screw all of you. I hope this letter is like a knife in your hearts. You ruined my life. All I've done is pay you back in kind." Brendan finds out that his neighbor has guns at his house at the end of his freshman year. When I read that part, I thought about gun control. That this could have been avoided if guns were illegal. Brendan says in the book a few times, "guns don't kill people, people kill people." In another email to Gary, Brendan talks about Columbine. He idolizes Harris and Klebold, the shooters at Columbine. He says, "I will kill ever friggin' one of them. It's gonna be Columbine all over again, only better." I wonder if all these recent school shootings have been done because they got the idea from Columbine. That maybe Harris and Klebold inspired more school shootings. My guess is that it certainly played a role in some school shootings.

Give a Boy a Gun #2

Now, the boys are in their freshman year of high school. It seems like as they got older the bullying got worse and worse. During a flag football game in gym class, some football players would pick on the "geeks" of the class. Brendan got hit by one of the football players named Sam Flach during the game for no reason. The coach of the football team simply said with a smirk on his face, "Uh Sam, this is flag football. No hitting." We see here that the school obviously did not take bullying seriously. When you have a faculty member laugh when one student hurts another, there is a problem with the school. The book also showed messages Brendan and Gary posted online to each other. After reading about this story, the author put an e-mail that Brendon had sent Gary. I could not really tell if it was sent when they were freshman or soon before the two shot up the school. Anyways, the e-mail was probably one of the most disturbing passages in the novel. It read, "Sam Flach will die slowly. I will shoot him in one knee, then the other, then a gut shot so he'll have no friggin' doubt where he's going. And he will stare up at me with a fear in his eyes he has never known, and i will put that friggin' barrel right against his forehead and say, "Gee, sorry, Sam," then blow his friggin' brains out." I was disgusted when I read that. It hurts me to think that people can actually dream about this stuff. Especially when it is a kid no older than 18 years old. Not only that, but how could kids treat others like that? In the same section, Brendan has another e-mail to Gary about how the teachers know what it going on, but do not do anything about it. Brendan goes on to say that he wants to kill a teacher for not doing anything about seeing him be bullied. That was the point where I guessed Brendan was the leader of the two. He was the darker of the two and I thought he kind of peer pressured Gary to thinking like he did.

Give a Boy a Gun #1

After a long day of reading, I finished my book. I read Give a Boy a Gun by Todd Strasser. It is a very dark book as you may have been able to tell by the title. The book is about two young men named Gary Searle and Brandon Lawlor. The two high school students are constantly bullied by their classmates. It is a very interesting book, because it is not narrated, it is told through a series of interviews. Most of the harassment is from the football players. The first part of the book is a part of Gary's suicide note. He explains to his mother that it isn't her fault and there was nothing she could have done about it. After the little snippet of his note, it goes into some background about Gary during his childhood. We find out his parents went through a rough divorce and lives with his mother. Brandon moves to the same town as Gary in seventh grade and the two become close friends. The book moves on sharing information about the two friends throughout middle school. They were quiet kids and known as outcasts in their school. In one of the interviews, a girl that had an on and off relationship with Gary and was friends with Brendan said, "When I got back it was different. I can't exactly explain how, but I felt it. There was something dark in Brendan. I don't know where it came from. Whether it had always been inside him, or whether it just started to grow because of the way people treated him in school." The book has an extremely dark tone to it. It made me uncomfortable just about the whole time I was reading it, but I guess that means the author did his job. The author wanted people to feel sorrow for these kids. Bullying is a huge problem, and even though this is a fictional story, it seems all too real.

Binge Drinking

Last week we watched a film called Haze in class. It was about both the hazing that goes on in fraternities, and sororities as well as binge drinking. There were some clips that were very disturbing to me. Some of these kids were so messed up they were doing the dumbest things, and making a complete fool out of themselves. It is no secret that college students and for that matter, high school students, drink to get drunk. I am pretty positive that this problem is never going to come to a complete halt. There have been a number of colleges that have tried the “dry campus” approach to try and cope with all of the binge drinking, however we all know there is no such thing as a dry campus. If kids want to get drunk, there is not much that can stop them. I think the best way to stop the binge drinking is to lower the drinking age. No, I don’t believe that it should be 18; I think it should be 19. The reason being, at a college campus, I would say majority of the students drink on a regular basis, or have had a drink before. It should be 19, because on a college campus the police cannot enforce the underage drinking law all that well. If they could or did, half the students would be arrested. If you cannot police the drinking age, what is the point of having one. I disagree with the argument of 18, because I am 18 and so is the vast majority of my grade. High school students should not be able to buy and drink alcohol. If seniors in high school could, then all of the grades below us would have easy access to alcohol and that is a disaster waiting to happen. All in all, binge drinking a huge problem, and if the problem continues I believe something has got to change.

Fighting in Hockey

For the past couple of years, the NHL has been under fire over a certain rule. The NHL has been criticized over the fact that fighting is allowed in the sport. Ever since hockey was created, players have been fighting one another. However, something many people fail to realize is that it really does serve a purpose in the game. I have heard countless people say that there is no point to the fighting, and that they only fight each other because they don’t like each other. In some cases that’s true, but most of the time there is certainly a purpose for players to fight. As we all know, hockey is a very rough sport and is played very physically. With players who are 6’5 and weigh 220 pounds, and others who are 5’9 and weigh 180 pounds, there needs to be players who make sure that these larger more physical players don’t take liberties on their teammates who are smaller and more skilled. That’s where the enforcers come in. Teams will sign players for the sole reason of protection, and often times it works. These enforcers play a huge role for their team, since players on the opposing teams usually don’t want to scrap with someone who is paid to fight. Therefore, these opposing players don’t take runs at the smaller guys on this enforcer’s team, allowing the smaller and more skilled players more room, and peace of mind that their teammates have their back. And no that’s not the only reason for fighting, there are plenty more. Fights can bring momentum from one team to the other very quickly. Enforcers will fight each other to try and rally the troops, like an energy boost. Not only does it get the players going, the fans get into the game even more. Athletes are considered performers, and the first thing they want is to win, the second is put on a good show for all of the people watching. And yet another thing people don’t realize is the respect around the league that these enforcers have. On the ice enforcers fight each other, but off the ice they are in most cases good friends. They just about always have a great respect for their opponent. It’s a code amongst these tough guys. They have unwritten rules, such as don’t punch a guy when he’s on the ice, or when the linesmen are breaking up the fight. I’ve seen plenty of interviews of professional hockey players saying, that enforcers have the hardest job in sports. It isn’t easy to throw and take punches from someone who weighs 240 pounds. They are often the most liked guys in the locker room as well. It’s a thing that many people think is barbaric, but with no knowledge of the game, it’s easy to come to that conclusion.

Great video of the respect they have for one another (it comes closer to the end):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIf9tJATX9k