Check this story.
It made MSNBC.
Dujuana, or "Toni" as I knew her, had three kids, two boys and a girl. Oldest was 8. They would come visit now and then, jump on our trampoline, play with our dogs.
Because Toni was our nanny for five years. Every day, she watched our boys. Wrestled with them. She had this idea that it was okay for boys to peepee in public, as long as they got behind a tree or something. They thought that was the coolest thing.
She held them on her lap and read to them. Worked to teach Brian to read. Wanted to be a teacher. She was good at getting together materials for teaching, crafts sort of stuff. Wonderful.
She was constantly trying to work things out with Michael, then her husband and now her killer. He was a good guy, to all appearances. Worked hard. Sometimes Toni would stay at our house, go out to dinner with us, when Michael was beating her and she needed to get away. He would call, and I would talk to him. He was always distantly polite, knowing that we were protecting her. But he never threatened any of us in any way.
Well, this time she didn't get away. He beat her to death with his fists, broad daylight, in someone else's yard, after he chased her.
She had a restraining order against him. But it didn't do much good, because she kept going back to him.
This may not be a good excuse for being grouchy. But it is a good reason to be ashamed of being male. You can't blame this on handguns, or illegal weapons in a moment of passion. He just chased her down and then beat her to death with his bare hands.
The news story said that Michael tried to grap a jailer's gun. I say put one bullet in a Glock, and then give it to him. Let him do the right thing.
4 comments:
I never got the idea of someone else's actions making an unrelated person ashamed of having some of the same attributes.
A fair counterclaim, if true.
But your "unrelated" begs the question.
Being male makes us related. Same primitive impulses, same testosterone, same murderous desires.
Now, I may be wrong about that, as a matter of empirics, and in fact such activities are truly unusual for males. But I don't think I am wrong.
I think Grandma will take the kids.
But how do you tell them about where Mommy is?
Or where Daddy is?
Yeah, I know. That is the tough part. Whatever you tell them, they will surely find out the truth on their own, so lying will only postpone the problem.
Stuff like this reminds me of Compton, where a giant percentage of my friends had a father in prison, or a mother in rehab, and currently getting cared for by grandparents or uncles. Atleast it beats getting cared for by parents that should be in prison, or should be in rehab, which unfortunately made up a big percentage of my friends as well.
It's easy to say 'do with the lemons life handed you', it's much more difficult living it.
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