Pill Poppin’ Geniuses

My school was all over the news yesterday.  It was a top story. 

Should I care more? 

Despite the ambulances and firetrucks, I was not alarmed. The smiling firemen had friendly-neighborhood-demonstratrion written in bold letters across their grins as they loaded official-looking bags of who-cares-what into thier vehicle. 

How wrong I was.  As a matter of course I refuse to watch the news.  Television is no medium for serious public discourse, as Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death so eloquently explains, despite his use of unnecesarily obscure language.  Although, my avoidance of the news has more to do with its constant stream of stories I can do nothing about and rarely care to do anything about in the first place.  So I didn’t realize what had happened until a friend called me.

Perhaps you’ve heard the story.  Though, if I were you, and did not attend my school, I would have picked this information off like the useless lint it is and promptly forgot about it by now.

Eight eighth-graders overdosed on some type of pill.  Is it wrong that my first reaction was apathy? Before shock or curiosity?

Tragic, I know.  I’m not emotionally void. But they took the pills themselves.  Which was my first thought.  My second was, they are impressionable eigth graders, but my third, that I was smart enough not to take pills in eigth grade, trumped that. 

These kids knew what they were doing.  We’ve all been through DARE or STAR or *insert some other form of mass produced overly kid friendly never was and never will be cool anti-drug progarm here*  They made a choice.  Now they have to deal with the consequences.

The news should be focused on AIDS or genocide or even (God forbid) swine flu.  Something worth worrying over, at least.  Actually, I take that back, swine flu is not worth worrying over.  The point is you can’t catch stupid and these kids are not to be pitied.

And would you believe they took these drugs at school and not even a year after some kid at our school died of an Ecstasy overdose?

Perhaps I’m oversimplifying matters.  But this matter just seems…simple.  Dont cry teen angst and insecurity.  We all had it or have it and we don’t respond by swallowing a handful of pills we obviously don’t know anything about.

Just sayin’.