While we pretended to be adults, those kids were teaching us how

See those kids?

Yeah, the ones running for their lives. The ones holding each other on the streets of a dark Michigan winter.

Those kids. Spartan kids. MI kids. MY kids.

Those kids are looking for the adults. They were always looking for the adults. They’ve looked for years.

Those terrified kids flocked to a tv reporter standing in the darkness because he was the only adult around. All the others were either chasing a gunman who shouldn’t have had a gun in the first place, or desperately trying to keep them safe via text.

But adults can’t talk about that because talking means “taking” and mental health costs money and we can’t be “socialists” and wokeness is bad and Jesus is good but Jesus was woke so…I guess we can have dead kids?

Who ARE we??!!

All those kids ever wanted was direction, and reassurance, and safety, and love, and a future, and acceptance, and the resolute knowledge that adults, that SOCIETY, would protect them.

But that night, once again, they were alone with only other kids to trust while they prayed that this time, just once, the adults would protect them from the monster in the dark.

Alone making the decision to help friends out a window while shots rang out, knowing they might die.

Alone behind doors barricaded with mattresses.

Alone reading text warnings, fearing he might be in their dorm.

Alone listening to the frantic reassurance of parents they knew couldn’t save them.

Alone wondering which information was real.

Alone on the street, consoling each other, while adults holding all the power sat riveted to the television, addicted to drama.

Alone safe at home, feeling guilty for not being there with their friends. Who. Were. Dying.

Alone in their closets, hiding under dirty laundry.

This is the story of their lives: our fantasy is more important than the reality they see and live every single day.

Those kids, as babies, discarded their princess dresses to climb into a classroom closet with the underpaid, socially maligned teacher they KNEW would throw her body between them and the bullets. Bullets they also KNEW might one day come.

Those kids didn’t talk about that because it would scare their parents.

Those kids never understood why the teacher who would die for them wasn’t paid more than the people who build houses or bridges or cars.

Those kids know their teachers are loving, nurturing, caring, thinking, educated humans just trying to make a difference, all for pennies on the dollar and the possible reward of a bullet.

Those kids know that’s wrong.

Why don’t we?

Oh, right. God. Country. Lapel pins. Flags. Our right to be sages or assholes and talk about it.

Important stuff.

Adult stuff.

While those kids practiced the Golden Rule, they resided in broken homes with parents unwilling to be civil over family holidays.

Their desperate teachers drilled them, their parents reassured them, their grandparents wept, while their society did nothing but fight and scream.

Those kids never saw a working Congress. They never saw compromise for the greater good.

They read about it. We made sure of that. But reading is not witnessing, just like yelling is not doing.

We fed them heroic stories of righting injustice, practicing fairness, defeating evil, and celebrating democracy, only to tell them to sit down and shut up when they tried.

While we were arguing about what to teach, they received crash courses in survival, and plotting sight lines, and making themselves small.

But those kids will never be small.

While you complained about screen time and computer games, they were using their phones to save friends from suicide after interpreting the meaning of a Snapchat.

Those kids saved lives while adults made rules about phones in backpacks.

Those kids begged for a fair and loving world. The kind of world we described, and their Sunday Schools sang about. When they didn’t find it, they made it for themselves and their peers and now they’re witnessing adults deride and dismantle it, all in the name of a loving God.

Those kids live what others only preach. Those kids know pronouns can’t hurt them. They know love is better than hate. They believe in education. They believe in truth, and equity, and work.

See those kids?

Those scared, good kids?

Those are loving kids. Those are motivated kids.

Those are OUR kids.

While you were looking for Obama’s birth certificate, they were watching parents die without health insurance. While you spent your corporate bonus in Bali, their parents worked 3 jobs and were never home.

While you were preaching love, they saw you living hate.

While you complained about their laziness, they were getting jobs at 13 to help buy groceries. They were sharing their lunches with kids who had none. They were giving friends their birthday money. They were running food drives and volunteering and speaking up for the little guy.

While we pretended to be adults, they were teaching us how.

Did you even notice?

They did all this while doing too much homework and living through a pandemic and taking AP classes to prove their worthiness for college and playing in the band or choir or orchestra and sacrificing their mental health for family and wondering if they were loved and cheering for their friends on the swim team so they could go into debt to go to college to obtain an education to be able to afford rent and MAYBE make their lives better if they didn’t get shot first.

All while you bought another overpriced property for your portfolio but did nothing for the neighborhood.

Those kids are KIND. Those kids are STRONG. Those kids are UNWAVERING. Those kids are FIERCE. Those kids are SURVIVORS.

But those kids are still expected to hide, run, or fight. Alone.

And those kids are EXHAUSTED.

But believe me, they watched. They learned. Hell, THOSE KIDS TOOK NOTES.

And those kids are in the mood to stop running. Stop hiding. Start fighting.

What will we do?

Will we step up as adults and solve problems, or throw temper tantrums like a toddler screaming for a candy bar? The same toddler they didn’t have the luxury to be.

Those kids.

Keep your eyes on them.

Don’t blink. Don’t look away.

Don’t dismiss them. Don’t undermine them. Don’t disregard them. Don’t malign them.

And NEVER, ever, ever underestimate them.

They’re glimpsing their power. Soon they won’t have to run. Because kids grow up and THIS group of kids grew up a LONG time ago. They’re just waiting for the calendar.

It’s past time to step up. and be the adults they thought we were. Stop screaming and throwing tantrums. Start talking. Start compromising. Start doing. Try fixing.

Because those kids… those exhausted, glorious, wonderful, resilient kids… are ready to walk out of their hiding places, off their campuses, and into their power.

And if we’ve done nothing by then, THEY will.

Because we taught them well.

But in learning, they developed the independent strength to step across our prone, screaming, useless, greedy, power-hungry, sanctimonious, thoughtless, lazy, judgmental, do-nothing bodies with only a muttered “thoughts & prayers”.

And we’ll deserve it.