brushfire"This, yes, this, it was always like this." -Stanley Koehler
REFLECTIONS OF AN EMPTY NESTER
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When my son was a senior in high school, he and a friend made a movie for Film Lit class. They enlisted several buddies to help with filming and took off in our 1996 red Volvo — purchased to survive three teenage drivers — one Saturday afternoon. They were gone for hours. I didn’t give it much thought other than to revel in the fact they were putting so much time and energy into a school project. I was hoping their tour de force would result in a good grade. Whenever he returns home, my son has a habit of shedding his belongings in the front hallway — his backpack, lacrosse bag, shoes, jacket. On this particular Saturday, I came downstairs to find an arsenal — and I mean this literally — of guns on the floor by the banister. I called his name up the stairs. “Where did all these guns come from?” I shouted. “They were for our movie!” he shouted back. “I borrowed them from my friends.” For the most part they were toys, but toys designed to look like assault weapons. And there was a BB gun or two. The closest thing we had to a gun in our house was a plastic water pistol. Later my husband and I watched the movie, a gangster-inspired film noir called “Dirty Money.” There’s a scene when the Volvo pulls up in the parking lot of a bank. Four boys — two in hoodies and two wearing baseball caps — pile out of the car carrying assault-style weapons. Heads ducked, they run toward the bank. Shots ring out. Did I mention my son and his friends are white? At this point, you’re probably thinking: what’s the big deal? Nothing happened. And you’d be right. Each boy came home to his family safe and sound and slept in his own bed that night. Not one of them gave a single thought to what could have happened. And neither did I, really, except in an abstract way. You also might be thinking — because this occurred to me, too — that what they did was pretty stupid. And you might wonder about parents who had no clue what their teenage sons were up to. You’d be right about that, too. But they were at that age when you try to give them a little freedom and independence to show you trust them. And yet, they do stupid things. You just hope whatever they do — drink, smoke pot, drive too fast, have sex, film a movie, shoot a toy gun, play loud rap music, drive away from a party with friends, reach for their wallet when an officer tells them not to — doesn’t cost them their life. And honestly, anyone observing the scene in the parking lot that day would have noticed one of the boys was holding a camera while the others were holding — and shooting — guns. No one would have felt the need to call the police and report having seen boys (well, men, really — they were full-grown 17- and 18-year-olds) with guns in the parking lot of a bank, would they? It would be obvious this was just kids goofing around, right? But what if the boys were black? And what if someone did call? And what if the police officers arriving at the scene, seeing black men in hoodies with guns, feared for their lives? What if? If you haven’t wondered until now how this scene might have played out differently for boys who didn’t look like my son and his friends, you haven’t been paying attention. This appeared in Grosse Pointe in Living Color.
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Mary Anne BrushJournalist, fiction writer, wife and mother |