Nurse the Hate: Guns and Teachers

My first “real” job was selling radio ads at a Top 40 radio station.  The station was totally lame.  We played “Ice Ice Baby” seemingly every 13 minutes which attracted our core audience of very young girls.  As a result, the only people that had genuine interest in running ads on the station were horrible nightclubs.  It was the only type of business we could help.  Every single one of these nightclubs ran the same basic ad.  (cue awful dance music)  “The hottest Thursday night in town is at our shitty club!  DJ Jack Off spins the hottest tracks!  Great drink specials!  Ladies drink free from 8-10p courtesy of Mr. Formal Limousine.”  They were all horrible clubs where people you didn’t want to meet went in their terrible party clothes to later rub sex organs with other people you’d never want to meet in their filthy apartments.  I was essentially the intermediary in putting these animals together.

One of my clients was a guy named Debo.  Debo was a Lebanese immigrant that moved to the United States and opened a dance club in what is referred to as a “transitional” neighborhood.  I would go to the club to get his cash every Monday for his upcoming weekly ad schedule.  A closed dance club is a sad place on a Monday afternoon.  It smells like stale beer, sweet mixers, and cheap cleaning products.  I would walk all the way to the back to Debo’s office to discuss our marketing strategy for the week.  These high powered meetings would be focused on such delicate matters such as devoting ad copy to note he now served mozzarella sticks.  It was comforting to know my marketing degree was being put to good use.

I remember once Debo asked me to go with him across the street to take cash to make a deposit at the bank.  “Sure.  No problem.”  He opened up his desk and took out a .38 and put it down with a thud.  “Here.  Take this.  We could run into trouble.”  Now I liked Debo.  He was an affable guy.  However, I would not say our relationship was strong enough for me to get into a gunfight with Middle Eastern gangsters in a dodgy Cleveland neighborhood on a Monday afternoon.  I decided to wait in the concrete bunker office with his grim cigarette smoking sister.  That was a fairly normal day at work for me at the time.  I thought it was exotic and sort of fun to peer into this underground culture. 

My girlfriend worked as an elementary school teacher.  She went into education as she had a natural affinity for children.  Kids sensed that she was trustworthy and kind.  We would get together after work and I would tell her these wild “nightclub guy” stories.  A client got arrested for dealing coke.  Strippers stole another guy’s car.  A nightclub promotor turned up dead in the river.  Then I would ask her what she did all day. 

“We made puppets.”

The idea that teachers are going to be outfitted with guns and engage in Ramboesque shootouts with assault rifle toting school shooters is absolutely insane.  It is bat shit crazy.  It is so devoid of common sense it would be laughable if it wasn’t being taken seriously.  The woman that became a teacher did so because she was gentle and nurturing.  It’s why she didn’t become a cop for instance.  Every fiber of her being would be focused on trying to stop a school shooter from hurting more children.  She would want to help the shooter and make him stop.  There is no way she could ever pull a trigger on a child.  It goes completely against her nature.  They were all like that.  Every single teacher I met at their social events was “nice”.  They didn’t go into teaching to fire weapons at kids. 

To have this suggestion come from our highest elected office via Twitter shows the utter incompetence of our president and his inability to grasp reality.  His lack of intellectual depth is astounding.  That isn’t even the outrageous part.  To see the NRA look at this latest school shooting as an opportunity to sell more guns on federal contracts to schools is reprehensible.  It provides a clear view of the ethical makeup of the people in the gun business and their appointed puppets in office.  

There is no bottom.