Give a Boy a Gun Read Online Free PDF

lying there with that thick quilt wrapped around him like a cocoon. I’d suggest that he go outside, find someone to do something with. He’d always say he would “in a moment.” But sometimes he wouldn’t get outof bed until three or four. I always felt as if there was something inside keeping him from being happy and active like other boys. A lead curtain of sadness that was too heavy for him to lift. I’m sure it had to do with the divorce. I can’t tell you how many times I’d see him like that, then go into my own room and just cry.
    â€”Cynthia Searle
    This one night I came home pretty late. It was definitely after midnight. Brendan was sitting in the dark on the curb in front of his house. Elbows on his knees, his head hung. Looking pretty bummed. So I went over and asked if everything was okay. He said no as if it was obvious things weren’t okay. I guess it was a dumb question, so I apologized. He patted the curb next to him. You know, have a seat.

    â€œMost of the attackers in the recent cases had shown signs of clinical depression or other psychological problems. But schools, strapped for mental health counselors, are less likely to pick up on such behavior or to have the available help.”
    â€”New York Times , 6/14/98

    I sat down. You could smell the liquor onhim, and I think I might have said something about drinking alone. He got into this rap about how we were both minorities, him being an outcast and me being African American. And didn’t I know that if it weren’t for football, I’d be in the same boat as him? I told him I thought there might be some truth to that, but that while there were definitely some bigots around, the majority of people we knew were smart enough to know better.
    He asked if I knew that some of the worst bigots in school were on the team. I said I didn’t think that was the case. We talked a little more, and then I got up and said I had to get to bed. Practice the next day, you know? I asked if he was going in, and he shook his head and said he was going to stay out for a while more. He tried to be tough and cool, but right at that moment he looked mostly miserable and weak.
    Since we’d been talking pretty intimately, I asked him why he was doing this to himself. You know, drinking alone and fighting and generally making himself an outsider. Hejust looked up at me. Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought his eyes were glistening, like with tears. And then he said that if I weren’t on the team, I’d want to kill each and every one of them too. I said I was sorry but I didn’t see it that way.
    â€” Dustin Williams
    If you’re going to teach ninth-grade English, you have to be prepared for some off-the-wall stuff, especially from a kid like Brendan Lawlor. You see kids like him every year. You get the feeling they’re at war in their mind, fighting some constant battle inside themselves as well as with everyone around them. Brendan wrote poems that sounded like plots for nightmarish action movies. Poems about automatic-weapons fire, limbs being torn off, the smell of burning flesh, skulls crushed and brains splattered in the halls, bombs, people begging for mercy before having their throats slit, then blowing yourself away. You would almost assume it was satire, except that for a kid like Brendan it was deadly serious. There were times when you wanted totake him by the shoulders and shake him. Come on, wake up! You’re young. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Buckle down, work hard, go on a date, go to college, and get on with it .
    â€” Dick Flanagan, Brendan’s ninth-grade English teacher at Middletown High School

    The number of kids killed by firearms has quadrupled in the past ten years. ( People , 5/3/99)

Part of Brendan’s Suicide Note
    Know what? Not everybody has to do what you A-holes want them to do. Maybe your kids did, but me and my friends chose not to.