When Martyrdom Dies
And Other Thefts Of Gun Violence
I do not let students swear in class or the hallways. I will explain to them why that is inappropriate and when possible, walk them back to the class that they came from and inform their teacher. I’ve been cursed out by students before and whenever it happens my own pupils can sense a frustration I attempt to hide. They too take umbrage when a teenager hurls such language to a person whose only goal is to educate, feed and mentor children into a better life.
What oftentimes follows is a question. Frequently, my students asked my why I teach. Embedded in a story is an answer to that inquiry, but vulnerability is the backbone of inhibition. I keep that part of my life inaccessible to most people. Instead, I give them an alternate albeit still truthful reason, expressing that I have a duty to close an achievement gap I surely benefited from. Summers off and the absence of a boss breathing down my neck doesn’t hurt, either.
One of my greatest fears is having to watch how the responses to that aforementioned question will change in our dystopian American future. When will the replies to this question begin to mirror those of the military or police? Be warned, there will be a day when educators offer “to protect and serve” as their response to this question. And how awful a day that will be.
It is increasingly likely that I will die before my love of teaching does. But I will be robbed blind before then. I will be stripped of my mental security and comfort. Classroom time once reserved for teaching annotation skills will be stolen from me, and in its place, extended lockdown drills. Gone is the ability to leave my classroom door, and therefore an aura of welcomeness unlocked to all passersby. Student desks that were once the landing place for legacies of etched initials have now been repurposed as redoubts. What a failure it is for my kids to suggest textbooks have a secondary use as disarming projectiles.
Perhaps most importantly, however, I have been robbed of martyrdom. There isn’t a teacher either ready to die or unafraid of it. Yet we have all made peace with the potentiality that our last breath may be released amongst the gunky litter of a school cafeteria. We have rehearsed the final text message we’ll send to our family. If the time comes, we have all imagined precisely how to sacrifice ourself for our students in a way that saves the most lives possible.
Foolishly, I once believed this fate would not be in vain. That when my mother visits my tombstone and sees how her very own plot is now bookended by her husband and son, she can at least claim that her last-born inspired change. That his death would spring a windfall of policy endeavors to neutralize this threat. To become a martyr one must not only die for their beliefs, but do so because it will push forward a worthy cause, a worthy change. But alas, martyrdom is now as dead as the elementary school children in Uvalde, Texas. As dead as the Sandy Hook victims. As dead as hope itself.
Biologically or emotionally, there may be no greater call to action than protecting the life of a child. If these deaths don’t inspire change, nothing can. I am not the octopus who scurries away into a protective cave only to sacrifice her own life when hatching their children. Neither am I the praying mantis who offers his body as nourishment to the female after mating. I’m not an animal. I am a god damn human being and I do not want to die in a school.
Tupac told us that his only fear of death is reincarnation. For long, I’ve disagreed with this maxim, but I am finally beginning to understand it. Being born again would only force me to once more undergo an all too familiar American metamorphosis; one that sees citizens shapeshift from patriotic innocents to jaded adults before ultimately solidifying as hopeless noncombatants.
Despite nearly 350 million people inhabiting this increasingly nightmarish country - most of whom desire some type of legislative gun reform - only a handful are preventing meaningful change. Their inaction may transform me from educator to eventuality, from storyteller to news story, from human to memory. And because their refusal to create change is robbing me of martyrdom, I have a list of demands:
If I succumb to bullet wounds, use my blood to write letters to congresspeople.
Force senators to kneel not only at their altar of worship, but at the school bench memorialized in my honor.
Turn my bone fragments into commemorative pins and substitute them for the American Flag pendants that our politicians wear.
Donate my clothes to children in need, so that they can drape themselves in it as a reward for literally surviving adolescence.
If I cannot become a martyr, if my death will not result in tangible, impactful protections for those who frequent schools, grocery stores and houses of worship, then I demand my legacy avoid transcendence. If my sacrifice cannot live in the spiritual realm as the impetus for legislation, then transform it into something physical.
Wear my death as a reminder of what I was and what I was disallowed to become.