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| Jack Shick August 26, 2011 |
Fair Warning:
This
is nothing more than a very long, disorganized, and probably not-worth-reading ramble of my experience with
Jack and my thoughts, compiled because I'm a think-reflect-takeaway person moreso than a feel-emote-ick person. Also, if
anything I write makes me a bad person, well, I thought it long before I wrote
it, so I already was anyway.
The Beginning
Arriving
two days into the training week for new graduate students, one of my co-workers
ducked into my lab. "Have you heard about Jack?" Her eyes were
wide, a common thing for this very expressive friend of mine, but this look
would be mirrored again and again on the faces of other students throughout the
day as they told me stories of this new and odd student. I soon learned
all about the first days of this guy who had yelled at one of our beloved
office assistants and the supervisor of our teaching assignment. He had not
focused on the task at hand during training times and had even prepared a
presentation on the wrong topic. I didn't meet him, as I was busy
catching up on work, but the next day I was excited to find that we would be
teaching together. I now had a new and (very) different person to meet
and probably a few challenges to keep me on my toes and thinking outside the
box.
I
still hadn't met Jack when I sat down for our first pre-teaching meeting.
He came in late and scribbled on blank pages, obviously lacking the papers he
should have had with him. I had brought far too many of our print-outs,
so I used passing him a set as an excuse to turn around and get a look.
Underwhelmed by his seeming average-ness, I focused on the meeting until we had
a break. I introduced myself as his teaching partner, and handed him a
pack of stickers for grading. He thanked me and drew a dot on an index
card. He held it up, gesturing to the dot with his pencil, "Do you
understand the difference between accuracy and precision?" I said,
"Of course," and he explained that precision is very important to his
understanding in interactions. I told him I could work with that and he
suggested that I follow our conversations with a summative email to ensure
communication is clear. We agreed that I'd teach the first class, and
that over the weekend we would meet to look at my lecture.
Working
Before
our first class together, since he had yelled at two individuals before, I sat
down with him and explained that students can be rude and ignorant and if he
ever felt like he needed to walk out of the room and take a minute, that he
should just let me know and go ahead. I told him that, while it was important not to raise his voice to or in
front of the students, if he needed to yell at someone that he was welcome to
yell at me after class. My feelings wouldn't be hurt, and I would not be angry
with him. (I'm pretty sure he never did yell at anyone besides me after this point) We sat down over my lecture slides, and I explained my choices
in images and examples to give him a starting point for the next week. He liked
my choices and appreciated my reasoning behind them.
The
first class went well. With a previous co-teacher, I had to follow
throughout the lab to re-answer all the questions he had answered, which I
was thrilled to not have to do this class. He was fine with the students,
and I reported this to all (and their were quite a few) who asked. The second class was a simple one that he taught the material for, and while not spectacular, it is wasn't particularly horrible. The
third class, I noticed some of his answered questions needed re-answering (the
class was becoming more difficult), as he tended to provide answers that, while
correct, were certainly over a freshman's head. The next class, he
taught, and it was an absolute disaster. I knew students hadn't learned, and
were going to complain. Things just went downhill from here.
I
met with various individuals in positions to help out, but his teaching was
ineffective, and the students were suffering. After a couple of attempts
at helping him improve failed (over the first month of classes he would happily
take advice and discuss concerns with me, but after a certain point he stopped),
I began documenting the unacceptable behavior as I had been asked to do.
No reason to be afraid. No reason not to be prepared.
For
some context: When I was young, for reasons not pertinent to the story at hand,
I slept with a T-ball bat, and my mother with a baseball bat. I was
quizzed on procedure and alternate plans if "bad people" came into
our house at night. As an adult, I've been close to chronic violence and
I've shared the occasional meal (and likely ride) with former violent
criminals. I've had more than a decade of martial arts training and studied
books from the oeuvre of "The Gift of Fear" and
"Telling Lies."
Like many people, when I sit down to eat, I try to take the seat that allows
the greatest field of vision and I take note of an exit route or two and a
ducking spot. My small battery of background in this area has suggested to me me,
more than anything, to always have a plan or three, because at the end of a
violent day you can't know enough, though, really, often it doesn't matter if you
know anything.
Not
once did Jack ever do or say anything threatening to me or the students, but
being a planner, I have always had a unique procedure for a given class, were
there to be a school shooting or similar emergency. (Duquesne has had one before) This year,
maybe because I was subconsciously concerned about Jack once he was let go, but
most likely because the popularity of discussing the Zombie Apocalypse made it
convenient, I let a small handful of students know (in an emergency, we'd need
more than just me), that in the case of a Zombie Apocalypse, they'd be one of
the people I depended on. I told the key couple what role I'd need them
to play and asked if they could handle it. Though it was in a joking
manner, these are kids who didn't laughingly agree, but stopped, contemplated
the situation, discussed better possibilities and costs versus gains, picturing
the scene and how to best respond. That's why I had chosen those students.
Friendship
After
our first class, we went to lunch at Subway. I told him about my home, my
family, and schools I'd attended. He told me about his schools and living
in New York and that he preferred not to talk about his parents, but that he
was an only child, too. Both former chemists in a biology program, we
talked about our interests and worked through some derivation problems in our
heads. I think he was qualifying me for friendship with this, and I was
happy to play along. Eating with Jack became a fairly regular thing
as did driving him home in the evenings.
We
told stories of childhood, stories of college, and he did start telling me
stories that mentioned his family, but stayed largely away from the
topic. We talked about our favorite and least favorite teachers
throughout life. In middle school one of his teachers yelled at him
because he set his books down too hard on the desk, and that stuck with
him. We talked about awkward college experiences. At Carleton
College, when his alarm went off while he was out of the room, his resident
assistant had allowed a neighbor to go in and swing the clock around the room,
breaking things. (Speaking as a former RA- the abandoned alarm is an obnoxious,
but regular, singer in the dorms that only warrants a note be written. And
usually another note. And another.) He actually shared this at my telling
a humorous story of nearly being locked in Western Psych during an RA
obligation due to a very short-lived mistaken identity. (That story is for
another day) He was very against treating children with psych drugs (he was
very passionate about this) and very much against labels. We'd both been
to the same area of Guatemala and we shared those experience. We talked about
our beliefs and religion. I forget what he was
originally...Presbyterian? But at the time, he was converting to
Catholicism.
We
also talked about the future. Jack wanted to see China and had started
studying some Mandarin. When I told him that I had studied abroad there,
he broke into some simple phrases, and I reciprocated. Jack was
uncomfortable with trying to predict too far ahead what he wanted to work
on. He said that because his background didn't include much biology, that
he still had a lot to learn this year before really knowing that. He
liked the idea of a family, but said that he'd need a wife to have kids and a
girlfriend to become a wife, and that he didn't expect a girlfriend any time
soon as he had never really had one. Jack was worried that he was getting
older and that by the time he was in a situation to have kids, his age would
increase their risk of certain serious diseases. He didn't want to
subject a child to that kind of life. I had similar concerns (these risks
are even higher for women).
We
graded papers together and prepared for the lab that we taught. One
evening, when the usual spots were crowded with undergrads on one end, and grad
students who weren't very nice to Jack on the other, we decided to go to his
apartment. On our way, he said that maybe we shouldn't (I'm a happily
married woman, and he had no roommate), but then asked me if I thought it was
okay. I told him that we could find some other place if he was afraid I'd
cut him up into little pieces, but we didn't have much to do so it wasn't like
I'd be there long. His apartment was clean, but not neat. He had
some interesting items from previous travels and a few cool things he'd picked
up along the way. There were a lot of books and papers (typical grad
student) and we sat at his table, did the under 20 minutes of work, chatted a bit, and I left.
Usually,
Jack and I had lunch and/or dinner alone, but a couple times he ate with me and
my friends. He had a tendency to only discuss molecular biology
throughout the conversation and to try to move the topic back every time it
strayed. Since we ate, breathed, and slept this stuff, we all kind of
looked forward to lunch as a break. A few days later, I asked Jack to
dinner with us (my friends were very Jack-tolerant and I had obtained their
pre-approval for this). He was happy at the invitation, and I sat down
next to him as he collected his many belongings. "Jack," I
looked up at him and touched his arm at the elbow to make this seem like a
gentle suggestion instead of a criticism (something that was very important as
he took criticism very hard), "Since we do science nearly 24/7, during the
few breaks that we have like lunch and dinner, we try to lay off the shop
talk. Would you mind helping us with that?" He sat his bags
down on the floor and thought for a minute. "Maybe next time.
I need to watch some TV or Movies first." I had to suppress a smile
that he wanted to do prep work, but I told him that was fine and that I'd see
him later.
"Smile,"
Jack would often say to people who looked serious. He commented regularly
that he liked people's smiles. When I was alone with Jack, he was very
very different from when we were with other people. With others, he
seemed on edge or faking “casual”. He didn't maintain eye contact
well. He seemed scattered and skittery. His statements were often
without basis or flow and were confusing. He also had a very
uncomfortable expression that he made (see picture above) when he was feigning
interest. When it was just us, he was a relaxed person unless it was an
exciting part of the story he was telling or we were leaning over some nerdy
goodness scribbling across the sheet. He was engaged, and instead of
awkwardly feigning interest when I'd hit a topic he was bored with, he'd simply
say, "I have no interest in that," and I'd move on. I found
this directness refreshing. I enjoyed talking about science and the world
with him. Other people's lives bored him, but that was
fine. I could talk about people stuff with anyone else in the
world. He challenged me to think. He challenged me to really defend
my positions and methods. He had a very nice smile and a warm laugh that I
never saw and heard when other people were around. Maybe he was just
better with people one-on-one.
Jack
had trouble understanding appropriate behavior. Early on he asked me to
let him know if others didn't like anything he did. I told him
immediately not to yell at people besides me as he had done the first week, and
let him know other things as I found them out. When I saw an email he was
writing to one of our supervisors, I asked if he minded that I suggest
different wording to avoid sounding rude. After that, he asked me to help
write and revise a number of his emails. He recognized that he didn't
always know what made people mad, and was glad to have my help.
When he was confused as to why the others might suspect something that he said
wasn't true, I pointed out that when he visited he was "John from
Oregon" and that when he started in the fall, he was "Jack from New
York." Other students in the department had made fun of this and
referred to him as John-Jack or Jack-John the first week behind his back and
ultimately started calling him JJ when he wasn't around. Stay classy,
folks. (The undergrads called him "Fanny Pack Jack" because he
always wore one) He explained that he was visiting from where he had been
living in Oregon, but that he was from school in New York, and that Jack was a
nickname for John. I asked him if he'd explained this to anyone
when he first arrived with a different name and location. He said that he didn't
think people would have any interest in that information.
For
an example of how his mind worked when we discussed these issues, I'll give a
detailed description of an amicable discussion we had once. After a
couple of weeks, I heard that he'd been emailing a female student regularly
about going to get lunch or study together. He had been making this
request of many people, including guys, and couples. He was trying to
connect, but he had a crush on this girl and was going overboard. When I
explained that he was making people uncomfortable, he looked perplexed and said
something to the effect of, "I'm certain that people ask their co-workers
to lunch and their classmates to study. Isn't that what I'm
doing?" I explained that, if turned down the first time, one shouldn't
push for it. He suggested that he may be turned down or ignored for a
legitimate reason, like an unavoidable commitment or not receiving the email in
time. I agreed that this was a possibility and suggested that,
statistically, the likelihood of that being the case went down with each
request. He suggested that this wasn't true- if she is busy during a
particular number of lunches, x, over a given number of total lunches, y, then
each time he asked her out, the probability that she was free was
(y-x)/y. I agreed that when predicting one future outcome based on her
actual schedule, this was true, but that we were not predicting what will
happen next time, yet, and that I'm questioning the assumption that the
response is based on real excuses. We are considering the probability
that she has had a good reason to ignore or turn down the invitation some large
number, n times, in a row. This means that we have to find probability,
p, that p=[(y-x)/y]^n, so p decreases as n increases (just trust me that this
is meaningful to some of us nerds). Given the law of large numbers, yes, this
is possible, but it is certainly not probable. Think Occam's razor.
To this he said something to the effect of, "Tomorrow, I'll ask a
different girl to lunch." I took a breath (my applied mathematics is
rusty, so I was happy to escape the stats before messing up), and explained
that because he's asked many people (mostly girls-because our department is
mostly girls) in a short time, then one person many many times over a while,
other students had talked about it in a very negative way and would be unlikely
to say yes, but quite likely to be pushed (depending on which person it was)
into making a formal complaint. I told him that it would not be good for
him, socially to continue this behavior. He wasn't sure about this, so I
told him that while I recognized that he was the superior chemist between us, I
was quite good at reading people (a relative statement), and that it may be
useful to consider me the Jennifer and Jack Team Expert on the subject.
He agreed, and stopped the invitations. [Wow, it was difficult putting
all those pieces back together. Something may be out of order, but I
think that is all we hit on and this is the logical order, so it is probably
close if not accurate to our original talk.]
This lasted until we were no longer really friends.
As
for other people, there were a handful of us trying to help support Jack, but
every time he overheard others making jokes at his expense and every time that
someone lost patience with him (I was definitely guilty of this a couple of
times), he became more and more defensive and reached out for help less and
less. He withdrew farther into his own head and shared less of
himself. We had a couple of frank conversations, which were obviously
very difficult for him, but he allowed them because he was trying very hard to
change his natural tendencies to fit with the social norms. He was mostly
worried about making people mad, but the one time that I suggested that a
couple of people were nervous around him, he was completely baffled and very
hurt. He only mentioned one person by
name who was mean to him, and his primary focus was, “What did I do to her to
make her be so mean?”
I
want to be clear: I understand the need to say, "Hey, this is life
and this bit and that bit are kind of ridiculous," and to laugh. I
did and do it, myself. But there is a line between this behavior
and that of judgement, prejudice, and malice. Some (not all!) were truly
being malicious and having no regard for feelings of someone who is trying very
hard to be more like them. I'm not naive. I understand that people who
are different are often treated badly, but when those you think are above that
behavior disappoint you, it brings the collective failing into greater relief.
Finally,
one person, who took offense to something he had said, stood in front of much
of the department, screaming at him viciously. Don't get me wrong- I'm
sure that whatever Jack said to him was horribly offensive (he didn't know what
it was that was so bad and the possibilities he listed to me couldn't have been
it). He was often horribly offensive to good people who were just doing their
jobs and sometimes even trying to help him, but as his constant worry about
making people mad indicates, he really didn't understand what those things were
and how to avoid them. Anyway, I'm sure what he said was just awful, but
this public and prolonged display of intense anger by the other was really
really bad. He sat there quietly blinking at the other man's rage until a
neutral party pulled the yeller around one corner, I went to Jack and asked if
he was okay. He said that he was and accepted my offer to drive him
home. This was the first bad time. On the way to his place, he
became quite upset with the whole situation. I tried to say reassuring
things, but when he became a little ridiculous with his aggravation at others'
behavior toward him, I pointed out that there were some things that he did to
make those others react badly. This was a mistake on my part because he
was already so much on the defensive. He told me to let him out of the
car. I told him that it wasn't safe where we were and not to worry, that
I wouldn't speak the rest of the way. When I dropped him off, I told him
I was sorry to upset him further. I emailed (or texted?) him a follow-up
on that and asked if he was still mad at me. He said "Don't be
silly," but Monday at work, while he didn't seem angry, he acted totally
different. Once again I asked if he was mad and he said, "That's a
stupid question," in a harsh tone. From then on I was other people
to him and he was only slightly and rarely the Jack I'd spent time with before.
The last 3(?) weeks were very different.
The
following day, we had planned that I would help him organize his lecture for
the week to come. Remember than
criticism was very difficult for him to process without becoming deeply
offended and going on the offensive. I
asked if I could look at his slides and maybe we could talk about them, and he
tried to put it off, but ultimately agreed.
He took out his computer and opened it, starting it up. I noticed that his hands were shaking severely,
making this task difficult, and he stared heavily at the keys and asked me when
I graduated from a school that he knew I didn’t go to. Very confused, I said that I hadn’t gone to
random-prestigious-school, but to the ones that we had talked at length about
in the past. He said, "Oh, you're a
liar and I don't want to work with a liar," shut down his computer, and
stormed off. When instructed to work with me on his lecture by the boss,
he asked for proof behind every change. (Paraphrased) "How do you
know our freshman biology students don't understand calculus-based
physics? Prove it." I couldn't get through. He was angry
and yelling, but as submissive about it as my smaller dog is when he grumbles
while my bigger dog takes his toys. Ultimately he said very gently, “I
don't like to fight, so I'm going to leave,” and did. He emailed me minutes
after, thanking me for being so calm. There were little good
conversations here and there (usually about research) and bad conversations
(usually about teaching - he had been relieved of that duty and had to get me
all his graded and ungraded papers). He began to need all work discussions of ours (who grades what, etc) to be approved by one of our bosses. He un-took all the advice I had
given him, and resumed pursuing one crush, then another, bringing up marriage,
then another, telling her he loved her. When I checked on him, since the
day he was screamed at, he always told me he was fine, where previously he had
told me what was actually going on. Once he did ask for help and I did
what he wanted (send a copy of my powerpoint to someone). Eventually, he
was dismissed. He sent an email to all of the department, and two other
departments (with private emails from administration left below in the re: re:
part of the message), requesting recommendations for another grad school or
job. He was asking what we thought he'd excel in and where, geographically,
we'd recommend. He asked, "how have I failed you that you are afraid
to spend time together?" and, "What do each of you want out of life
and is there anything I can do help you attain that goal and to encourage you
to be happy?" I responded and was a little harsh, but it was hard
truths that he needed to grab hold of to achieve success.
I
had one opportunity. On a day when I was very busy and tired, he
requested that we sit down and work out some biology problems together. I
told him I didn't have time. That was him reaching out and me shutting
the door. I should probably feel guilty about this, but practically,
every time he had a problem with me, he'd need this, and either (a) eventually
I just couldn't get together with him, producing the same outcome, or (b) we
would sit down and do it, but ultimately I'd get something wrong and he'd loose
respect for me, anyway. I tried to send friends of mine in to be the
me-replacement once he started treating me like other people, but it didn't work.
 |
| Email response near the end of Jack's time at Duquesne |
I
wanted to text him and ask if he was okay, but, first of all, he probably
wouldn't have responded since we weren't exactly bff's at this point, and
secondly, he wasn't allowed to contact "girls" in the department, and
I was worried that it would be stressful and difficult for him to make the
judgement as to whether to answer me or not if he wanted to.
Leaving
He
was always taking Asprin- a ton of them, which I'm sure made him sick and that he offered to people like chewing gum. He
had told me before that he had some acid-reflux like problem, and was often in
a lot of discomfort. The very patient (and sweet) people that were in his
class came to me one day worried about him. He had taken quite a few caffeine
pills. We sat down and calculated how much it would be and it wasn't near
overdose levels. This got worse and worse with time, and toward the end,
he would sometimes lay on our couches moaning.
He
had been given the semester off of teaching in hopes that he would improve
before starting again. His interactions
with people became less and less productive and made over-reaching requests for
information, like ring size (at a later point he bought a ring that he was
trying to sell to people), someone to read something off the internet and
summarize it for him, and he wanted to see my passport and other documents. He
had returned to pursuing a couple of the girls in our department and had moved
from suggesting lunch and studying to potential marriage subjects and declaring
love.
With
the girls that he was harassing most, he really lucked out. They were
genuinely good people. They gave him every opportunity to learn how to
behave appropriately. His contact with them wasn't threatening or sexual,
but the frequency, persistence, and depth of one-sided feeling expressed was far
beyond inappropriate and unprofessional. Once it reached this
level, it had to be stopped.
Not one day did Jack walk into my
presence a dangerous person. I can't stress this enough. Serial
killers have likely been pre-serial killers most of their lives. They
were dangerous even before killing people- when they were children torturing
cats and burning down sheds. Crimes of passion involve less time- minutes
to hours, and these people are fine up until this point, but probably have bad tempers and are quick to anger.
Jack was neither of these. He had
a plan and guns. He probably wasn't dangerous the over-3-months before,
when he was at Duquesne (though I wasn't around him the last couple of weeks, so I
don't know what he was like then). Jack would have needed weeks to plan this,
looking for somewhere to place the blame for the badness in his world. Nobody
was around him to see this change and try to pull him back from the edge. Had he been around somebody, anybody, or a
group of people would have been even better, they would have noticed a change.
He would have stopped planning for the future. He would have been in this
mind set- dangerous- for weeks. He would have been a person in a place to
take a life, and there was no one to catch him right then.
I
have a lot of frustration with the people who unduly called him dangerous when
he wasn't. He was not a psychopath. He was not the type for a
passion killing. He would have planned this for weeks. He would
have walked around dangerous and we could have seen it. The people in his
neighborhood did. We did not. He was not dangerous when he was with
us and I just hope that it wasn't a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The thing about being
on the edge of something, is that the other side of the edge- the
one you are on at the moment and trying not to leave- is of something else. I can't help but think if more
people were pulling him back that way instead of pushing him the other...
The
three arguments we had always involved him lowering his eyes, backing away as
he spoke, shoulders hunched, and eventually leaving the situation. Anyone
can be dangerous if put into the right position. For most of us, the
boundaries around those positions are expected and obvious to one another.
(i.e. If you become a danger to my god-kids, I will become a danger to
you.) Jack's world was a different place. And he had trouble making
and maintaining connections. Those boundaries for him were undoubtedly
different, and there was no way to discern them. I spent 3 weeks trying to find him again, or
help someone else find him, but it was just not an option for him at that
point. Nobody was close enough to
understand his behavior. This is why, once it was
clear that he could not let anyone peek in to see where those boundaries might
lie, I voiced my position that he should not be in our program and explained
this concern to the person who's hands the situation was in at the time.
At some point, he found himself inside those boundaries of badness, and for
that, a great many have suffered. I mourn for the life lost and the
terror spread, but I am grateful for the safety of my students and co-workers.
Throughout this time, I was in
meetings escalating appropriately for the situation with his teaching at one
level a week later at a third party's concern for my
safety at another level, and
finally, a week later at the concern about ambiguous behavioural boundaries at yet another
level. Before this,
his behavior made sense to me, because he could explain himself and we could
talk about things, but now the curtain was drawn, and despite our attempts to
get him to connect with other people, it just wasn’t happening.
Everything
moved at an expected pace, any faster, and it would have been discrimination
against him for being weird- any slower and it wouldn’t have been taking care
of the other students. Keep in mind- at
no time was Jack aggressive at Duquesne, he never made unwanted physical
advances, and he never made threats of violence. When the Duquesne Police
called, because my name ended up on some complaint somewhere (though I didn't have "complaints," I had concerns), I declined to get
involved. I have to give big praise here to the administration of my
school. I always felt supported by the leaders in these roles. I
never felt like I was put in a position that I was uncomfortable with, and I
always felt like I knew who to go to with what.
Had
he been expelled immediately from Duquesne for being weird, no one would have
been with him that whole time and if he had slipped into this state and needed
someone to blame, it may very well have been Duquesne. Had he walked into
a gen bio class of 250 students, the injuries and loss in life could have been many
times over what it was at Western Psych.
When he left Duquesne, he was applying
to other grad schools, considering travel, and generally planning for the
future. When he walked into western psych, he did not have his stuff with
him. He did not have his stuff with him, which if you knew Jack, you know
how huge that was. He did not have his stuff with him- he did not plan to
survive that day. I know he tried to leave out a door to a garage from
the news, but who knows- maybe he had an escape route just in case it worked
out, maybe he had somewhere else to hit next, but he didn't plan on
living. When he left Duquesne, he was planning on living and he was not
dangerous.
Western Psych
It
was 3pm Thursday, and leaving from lunch with my cousin, the television alerted
me to the shooting. I said the typical, "Oh goodness," and
left, turning on my tablet's police scanner for information. I'm fairly certain it is illegal to disclose what you've
heard over a police scanner, but the most important thing is what I
didn't hear. Since this was more than an hour after the shooting, I had
missed the description of the shooter. If I hadn't, I'd have known: Jack
always had a fanny pack and wore two watches (because sometimes he read digital
better and other times he read analog better). Soon, the police had switched channels and I thought no more about it besides taking in another
oh-so-tastefully worded comment or two about how it might have been Jack.
Note: Every time anyone did anything
crazy, someone suggested "It could be Jack!"
Roughly
26 hours after he walked into Western Psych shooting, two of my friends saw a
minutes-old news update with his name. They took the information up the
latter and soon my inbox shared the news along with direction not to speak with
any reporters. (This restriction was lifted soon after.)
The
man that he killed was named Michael Schaab and was 25 years old. He was
a counselor for the elderly and had just gotten engaged. His sister had
been killed violently just 17 months earlier at the age of 26.
I
don't think there are words...
Final Thoughts and Random Bits of Little Things
If
asked what phrase Jack said to me most often, it would certainly be,
"You're good friend." I kept telling him that whatever little
thing I had just done should be expected of me as a friend, but that I
appreciated his appreciation. Now, I just wish I could go back and shake
him a bit and say, "Hey, b-t-dubs, I would still like you (and
would actually be more intrigued) if you had happened to have been arrested
and/or committed at some point. In context, I could call Jack on any bullshit he tried to pull. I had a baseline of him for current thoughts and feelings and actions, however, when he talked about the past, I had nothing. I told Jack once, sitting in the tutoring
area of our department, that I couldn't read him very easily, and that I really liked
that about him. I told him that he could sit there there telling me fake stories all night, and I'd have no idea. I can see his chuckle at that in my mind. :) Ultimately, Jack told me a lot
of lies, all about his family and past (it makes me smile every time I think about
all the slick ones he pulled passed me), but if he had just shared this one
part of himself, I would have been more than eager to be all up in that.
It would have been good if I could've told him that nothing he'd done would make me like him less
or scare me off. I wish I'd had the opportunity to earn the complement he
bestowed on me so many times. I would have done a good job of it.
This
is such a strange thing to think about since this was a friend of mine.
I'm not over here gasping, and thinking "How could it be?" That
isn't the problem. It's just that this was my super weird friend who then
wasn't really but then wasn't allowed to talk to me and then went and shot up a
room full of people all in a few months. For the past two days (I'm
writing this 3 days post-shooting), I've watched the news go from having only
his name, to adding what neighborhood he lived in, then what building, then
comments from the couple down the hall, then where he lived before Pittsburgh
and that he'd temporarily changed his name (not surprising, but I didn't
actually know that), then where he started college, then where he ended
college, then where his parents lived, then that he was a student at Duquesne,
then a few more details have trickled in a bit here and there since this
morning, but it seems to have come to the end of the story. Yesterday a
news reporter emailed me. It is just strange. He gave me a stapler as a
gift to cheer me up during a bad week because I like office supplies. He wanted to travel to China. He thought
about his future kids.
I’m
a bit frustrated with my lack of patience with him.
We certainly butted heads a couple of times when teaching the last
couple weeks that he did. More than once
those last three of weeks he was at Duquesne, I threw up my metaphorical hands,
and walked away. I try, but I’m not a fire hydrant, silently at the ready for all time. Still, in the future, I hope I will have more
tolerance and fortitude when dealing with people who try my patience.
I
try to think that there was not a thing that any of us who knew him at this
time could have done to help him. Some of us tried. We tried
again. We tried in a different way. And, truly, he tried. He
accepted guidance and needed to be re-convinced. He accepted more advice,
but needed it to see proof. He tried so hard to let, at least me, in (I
don’t know for sure about his relationships with others). And then that one day, it was too much, and
he just stopped. He was completely unable to accept help in a long-term
way. Even when he tried because he knew he should, he couldn't maintain
that.
What
I can’t help but think is that, of course this was a possibility. Jack
was a guy with some problems. He had no family around. He had no
real friends by the time he left Duquesne, and the only people he had any
friendly connection with, he was no longer allowed to contact. He had no
job. We took a person with problems and severed every connection he had
to this world, hoping he would land on his feet, or otherwise not caring.
Expecting that if he didn't, some societal net would catch him: hospital? police?
I
know it is natural to ostracize those that do not or can not conform to social
norms. I know it, but I don’t understand
it. I just don’t understand why, instead
of recognizing and enjoying people as they are, others need them to fit. Giving someone who is different a chance to
get along with you as long as they behave normally, isn’t giving them a chance. They can't.
I
wish he’d shared his history, though I understand why he didn’t. I’m hard of hearing and ADD and quite dyslexic
and I keep that all on the DL as much as possible, because no one wants to hire
that person. Still, I might have had
more patience and others might have been nicer.
But wishes, of course, are for children.
I've had people say that I went far above and beyond with Jack. I don't think this is the case. When
I was young, I chose the teddy bear with the crooked stitching and only one
eye, because I was afraid that no one else would love him and I knew that I
could (to be fair, I also thought it made my Mum proud). In kindergarten,
I made friends and played every day with the slow girl because no one else would
(to be fair, I stuck with her was partly because she let me make the bulk of
the play-time decisions). In middle school, I gave up much of my free time
daily to help a new student who didn't speak English through her work (to be
fair, I was kind of bored and this gave me something new and exciting to
do). Overlay liberal values, Christian values, a mother who was a Special
Ed teacher, and the fact that I can be a bit of an odd duck, myself, and this
behavior is not unexpected. It is not above and beyond. It is
simply what a good person, a good Christian, and someone who can look at great
differences and see beauty does. It's the broken people I love and those
who experience the world differently who I enjoy. I've never regretted
looking out for any of God's children and teddy bears, and I never will.
Every human should be cared about by someone. (To be fair, Jack was also my best opportunity to totally nerd out with someone over pages of numbers to play with on a regular basis)
I
feel a bit burdon-y because I know good little bits and other people don't. I recently lost a person close to me that I
loved dearly, and she was amazing and inspiring and loving and well loved and a
school teacher, and there are thousands of people walking around today with
little good bits of this person we all valued so highly. In our very very short friendship, I saw little
good bits of Jack. I’m sure his parents
have little good bits of him, but from the stories I’ve read, he didn’t have
many good friends. I feel like after
just a few weeks being close with this guy, I’m one of the few people who miss
him at all.
Many of my co-workers have said
something to the effect of “It could have been us.” Yes, I see that. They are talking about the possibility that
our department could have been the shooting victims. Plenty of people are covering that thought
for me, so I feel pretty satisfied just to gloss over it. What I can’t help but think about in the “It
could have been us” vein, is that so many people could have ended up like
Jack, and still could. He was an only child, his parents
far away. He didn’t have close friends
in the area. He had some problems that
led to him losing his job, and then he was all alone. It’s not difficult to end up all alone if you
are having a rough go of it. Alone, the
jump from needing help to murderous rampage is just a lot smaller.
I’ve found myself repeating some
things to people so many times that they’ve lost all meaning:
I think people just have breaking points, and that it is more of an internal
limit than external.
There just is no fixing some types of broken.
I just would have wished better for him, for the people he injured and
traumatized, and for the man that he killed.
I
was watching Skins series 4, and the JJ character was wearing two watches: one
digital and one analog.
I have not been provided the capacity to understand why things had to be so
hard for Jack, to figure out what made him cross that line, or to change what has
happened. I have been provided the capacity to feel for those hurt and dead, to learn greater patience and diligence when
trying to help, and for forgiveness.
To
the officer who shot and killed my friend. If there is an afterlife- If
there is a place where we can exist, free from illness and disability, and look
clearly back on our time here, I have to imagine a healthy-minded man thankful
that you stopped him when you did.
 |
| A gift from Jack, because I like office supplies and I'd had a bad week. |
I'm
not shattered by the loss in the battle to help Jack. When you take in
strays, you heart has to go out to each one, but it can't break every time you
fail. Because most of the time you fail.
There was nothing that anyone could
have done. That's not true. There was nothing that anybody knew how
to do. Knew that they should do. And could do.
I
grieve for my friend.
A
dear friend and priest-in-training (is there a word for that?) sent this to me
when I asked for prayers:
Lord,
make us instruments of your peace.
Where
there is hatred, let us sow love;
where
there is injury, pardon;
where
there is discord, union;
where
there is doubt, faith;
where
there is despair, hope;
where
there is darkness, light;
where
there is sadness, joy.
Grant
that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to
be understood as to understand;
to
be loved as to love.
For
it is in giving that we receive;
it
is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and
it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
