Stray Bullet

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I buy the newspaper every day.

It brings great excitement to me and my dogs.

“I got the paper!”

Melky and Paris love hearing me say it. They jump around after I make the announcement.

I’m not sure why I’m still buying the paper every morning. Like everyone else, I read a lot of my news on my phone.

I don’t even touch the front page.

I usually read the local news as I eat lunch, and the sports at dinner.

Yet, the front page usually catches my eye as I pay the $1.50 for a paper that’s half the size it used to be when it was a quarter.

(Sound like an old man there, right?)

The thing is, the front page caught my eye on Monday morning.

There was a photo of a child.

The headline proclaimed that the poor kid was killed by a stray bullet.

It only made the front page because it was a child because every weekend there are countless murders in countless cities...

..and we shrug it off.

So many black kids are senselessly murdered in gang-related violence.

“We know where to go to stop it,” a police officer once told me. “We don’t want to. Let them kill each other off.”

Okay, so maybe the cop I was talking to wasn’t the most enlightened guy in the world, but he’s partially correct, isn’t he?

Everyone in every city knows where the bad neighborhood is.

We lock our doors as we drive through and when you hit a red light you might not stop.

Just go home...

...and forget it’s happening.

I saw a news review of the death.

Tragic.

“We need to stop the violence!” One distressed woman proclaimed.

We won’t.

Not enough people care...

...and that’s so heartbreaking.

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