Taking off from Patek Philippe’s iconic slogan, University Diaries continues its special series on fathers, and sons, and guns.
Violent, mentally disturbed daddy had his gun taken away from him – twice – but this is America, and after awhile they gave it back! So I guess to celebrate he “returned home from work [last year] and went to bed, leaving his duty Glock 19 [He’s a parole officer! I ain’t making this up.] loaded and unsecured on a living room desk.”
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Now we all know how easy and popular it is, when you kinda feel blue, to grab the domestic firearm that’s just sitting there on the living room desk, the Glock that’s murmuring to you how quickly and painlessly it’ll make your blues go away… We all know that tons of our fellow citizens, every single day, pick up America’s most abundant and convenient home appliance and have at their cortex with it. Little 18 year old William Han Manstrom-Greening is – was – one of those fellow Americans, and he has his father to thank for his early exit.
But now dad’s un p’tit peu up shit’s creek, as is the parole office which figured rearming a guy who repeatedly “harassed and threatened violence against co-workers and his wife,” and who also had a “history of mental health diagnoses, including severe depression and bipolar disorder,” made sense. Cuz they’re both being sued by the kid’s estate for wrongful death.
One final detail: “After the 18-year-old’s death, the county took no disciplinary action against” the father, which UD assumes means, among other things, that he’s still packing and still leaving his loaded Glock lying around the house. Wonder if he has any other kids.
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Why did Greening – does Greening – keep getting guns? Because this is a man’s world. And that is what Isabelle Robinson has had to learn.
A year after I was assaulted by Mr. Cruz, I was assigned to tutor him through my school’s peer counseling program. Being a peer counselor was the first real responsibility I had ever had, my first glimpse of adulthood, and I took it very seriously.
Despite my discomfort, I sat down with him, alone. I was forced to endure his cursing me out and ogling my chest until the hourlong session ended. When I was done, I felt a surge of pride for having organized his binder and helped him with his homework.
Looking back, I am horrified. I now understand that I was left, unassisted, with a student who had a known history of rage and brutality.
Why was that? Why was Cruz still in Robinson’s high school at that late date, and why was that high school leaving her alone with him?
My little sister is now the age that I was when I was left alone with Mr. Cruz, anxious and defenseless. The thought of her being put in the same situation that I was fills me with rage.