last week....

as a parent there are times in which no amount of preparation can guide you in what to do....last week was one of those times for me....

monday evening i was sitting at my computer helping olivia with homework when my phone rang. olivia answered and said it was one of her friends from school, dakota, who's mother wanted to speak with me about hadden. "oh lord, what did he do now" was the first thought that popped into my head. i took the phone and said hello and began to clinch my teeth. now most of my friends know that hadden is a great kid. he is like a puppy that has just weaned from it's mother and is bounding around exploring new territory and finding what's out there. he is a great kid. he has many friends, is liked by his coaches and teachers, is funny and well-liked by his peers. many of his teachers have commented on hadden's natural leadership ability and have stated that his classmates look up to him and respect him. unfortunately, hadden is also a tad immature and can be quite mouthy is pushed too far. easy to say, he doesn't take any crap, let's just put it that way.

so back to the phone call....ronnie, dakota's mother, explained that dakota had been at a next door neighbor's house; this girl is apparently a junior at the same high school hadden attends. she explained that the girls had been on a speaker phone call with another high school student by the name of austin. during their conversation apparently my son's name can up and the young man told the girls he was going to bring a gun to school and shoot my son in the head. he said something to the effect that he had had enough of "hadden's crap" and was going to put an end to it. after hearing this dakota went home and told her mother and then her mother called me. i thanked ronnie and dakota and told dakota that she did the right thing to report this and how brave she was to do the right thing.

i was very thankful to have received this information. images of columbine started flashing through my head. the thought of someone hating my child so much caused me to start shaking violently. many people don't remember the school shooting in 1984 at parkway south jr. high (now middle school.) i had many friends at that school and one friend who was actually in the room when the shooting took place. i recently reconnected with her via facebook and during one of our conversations she brought up the shooting and said that it has haunted her every day of her life. i can't imagine witnessing such a horrible thing. i can't imagine anyone hating my son so much to want to kill him.

after taking a moment to try to calm myself, i grabbed the phone and made a phone call to the head principal of my son's school. thank God for all those volunteer hours i've put in that i had his cell phone number and thankfully he answered. i explained to him the situation, and with calmness he explained to me what our next steps were.

i had to place a phone call to the safe schools hotline, this number is set up by the STLCO police department to field threats such as these. an officer was sent to our home to whom i gave a report. he stated that he was going to go and speak with the young man to make sure he didn't have access to guns, etc. he stated that he would not interview the girls unless my husband and i decided we wanted to press charges. (oh, during all of this i had forgotten to call lynn! my mind was so focused on how to protect hadden i had completely forgotten to call him!) the officer left and then i called lynn.

as a little back ground the student, austin, who made this threat had been in a class last semester with hadden and had already received 10 days in school suspension for threatening him before. while the threat had been similar "i'm going to kill you" it did lack a weapon which apparently is the last straw and also said he was going to do it at school. this semester they do not have any classes together and austin continues to seek hadden out in his study hall class, to which he comes in and starts mouthing off to hadden and as hadden puts it "starts shit."

after discussing with lynn, we decided to press charges, especially since the threats have now increased in violence. enough was enough. the police officer called me back and stated that he had spoken with austin and his father and austin denied saying anything (i could have called that) and that he would never do anything and he was tired of hadden saying stuff, etc. i told the officer i didn't believe him and that we wanted to press charges through family court. the police officer told me that he would then take the girls statements.

thank God for snow......monday night snow began to fall and was enough to cancel school the next day. i was most thankful that it gave us a little extra time to figure out what we were going to do. monday night i did not sleep. whenever i closed my eyes i had horrible visions of a kid coming into hadden's classroom and pulling out a gun and shooting him. i woke up crying and just couldn't go back to sleep. hadden was very angry with me for reporting this to the police. he didn't take the threat seriously. he doesn't have the reference points we all do. he hasn't watched the grieving parents on tv to understand the enormity of the situation . in some ways i am thankful but i am also scared by this. unfortunately we live in a violent society (and world) were respect for human life is non-existent. as most people know, that violent mis-guided people have a way of making their plans play out. dylan klebold and eric harris did not have access to guns but they were able to obtain a lot of them illegally.

i spoke with dale (the principal) some more on tuesday. he explained to me what was going to happen on wednesday. he did a great job in trying to ally my fears but i kept seeing horrible images involving hadden. i wanted to take hadden to school on wednesday but he nearly blew a gasket about it, and i relented and allowed him to go with his friends as he normally does. dale told me that they would secure hadden the minute he walked through the door.

wednesday morning....presidents' forum meeting and i'm the president, oh crap, forgot about that! i had to be at the other side of the district. i start the meeting and start texting dale to make sure everything is ok. texts coming back "everything going as planned" "statements received from girls" "extra officers and detectives here" "austin has been detained" "hadden is safe" then a "please call me ASAP." CRAP! what did that mean? i had explained to my vp what was going on and told her i had to leave the room. since cell phone reception is non-existent inside our schools, i ran to the main office and used one of their phones. i called dale. he explained that austin had come to shool with his father, and again he denied making the threat, when the detective and police told him they had signed sworn statement that said otherwise, he did then admit it. per school policy he was immediately given a 10 out of school suspension. he will then have to have a meeting with the assistant superintendent and superintendent to review his file to decide whether he will be allowed back in school. i hope given the fact that he has threatened before that he isn't allowed to come back. to me he has gone too far, enough is enough. as i said to dale, can someone please tell me where his rights end and my child's rights begin?

so for now he isn't at school and i am resting a little easier.....not sure this will be the case next week when he is set to return.

ok, let's try this out...

After reading a friend's blog, I decided I would take a stab at this blogging thing. I've done the Facebook thing for a while, but as a typical Gemini I am beginning to tire of it.

Don't know if anyone will ever read this, but thought that perhaps just putting some words down would be theraputic.....