After settling myself in, 1 of my favorite colleagues strolled in. Seeing me, he bombarded me with questions. Out of the mouthful of consonants, I easily discerned "sedemnaicet". Seventeen.
News travels fast.
I'm unsure when I received the news about Parkland. I remember the BBC notification, the sigh within me, and little else.
Our conversation continued. My fellow colleagues leaned further in. I pulled out my best Bulgarian explaining what I heard picking up important words along the way. 'Pistolet' means gun for example. My colleagues kept shaking--or rather nodding as Bulgarians do--in disapproval. "лош е," they kept saying; "It's bad." I couldn't have agreed more.
The bell rang and I shuffled away to class where I was met with the usual high energy of 16 year olds. On Thursdays, I have 10A and 10B: 2 of my favorite classes! Looking at the sea of smiles, I can't imagine something happening to them. Moreover, I can't believe that educators now have to consider these things.
10B ended in slight disappointment. Team 2 was in the middle of guessing 'elbow' before the bell rang. We will never now who won Team Connect Four.
I returned to the teacher's room to find another one of my colleagues sitting there. A rather opinionated gentleman with a penchant for Putin, he looked up from his newspaper and asked "эащо?" "Why?" A rather forward question. He had missed my earlier lecture about gun culture in the US. I was prepared to go into the details of what I described as the 'vtora constituciya' which more than likely translates as the 'second constitution' that is if 'constituciya' is even a cognate. The words were about to flow when he interrupted, "Само в Америка." "Only in America," he retorted and nodded in disdain. I wanted to shake him and agree with my colleague, a rather strange feeling.
My walk back home was a lot slower than the stroll to school. I pondered my many responses realizing, alas, the time had passed. But I also thought about something else: how strange the concept of school shootings really is to those outside of the US.
One of the most common statements I hear from foreigners: "The US must be so dangerous with everyone owning a gun." I usually chuckle about this statement: the irony of Americans feeling the same sentiments--"Oh, X country is so dangerous!"--towards the world; the irony that my education in the US was significantly statistically riskier than my classroom in Bulgaria; the irony that my elementary school-aged sisters are more in harms way than I is not lost on me.
Unfortunately, I don't have a solution, but, if my time abroad has taught me anything, it's that Americans need to do some soul searching; the US is a statistical outlier in an ugly way.
This site FulbrightBlogaria.blogspot.com is not an official Fulbright Program site. The views expressed on this site are entirely those of Keegan Scott and do not represent the views of the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State or any of its partner organizations.
