“No.”

Gun’s Quote-of-the-Week:

“No.”

-The Officers of the Cameron High School Student Council

2001-2002 School Year

I haven’t shared this story with many. I suppose the reason why is because I didn’t want it to be misinterpreted. I didn’t want people to think of me as arrogant. I didn’t want people to think that I was apathetic or didn’t care. I assure you, neither is the case here. However, on this day, I feel like this story which I have mainly kept to myself all of these years needs to be told. Its timing seems appropriate.

Ten years ago, and just a few days after September 11^th, I and the other officers of the Cameron High School Student Council were called into the Art Room by our advisors, Mrs. Brizendine and Mrs. Fish. It was about a week after the tragic attack in New York, and the administration had a request for us. They wanted us to change the theme that we had selected for Homecoming that year.

“We just think it would be more appropriate for you to use the theme of ‘Heroes’ where we celebrate our police, firemen and the military.” Mrs. Brizendine said.

The original theme that the Student Council had selected was the one I had brought to their attention at the very beginning of the year and got the other Executive Officers to buy-off on during our summer planning session. That year our football field was 100 years old. It was started as a football field by the Missouri Wesleyan College. When the College went defunct in the 1950s, the field was deeded to the school district, where the Friday Night Lights took place ever since. The first football game in town was played on that field in 1901.

Now, fast-forward to today for a minute. You see, sometime between 2001 and 2011 the terrorists won. The terrorists won when 7-year-old boys have their penises groped by TSA agents to make sure they aren’t carrying any heat aboard an airplane. The terrorists won when an 85-year-old woman is cavity-searched to make sure she isn’t storing a bomb up there. The terrorists won when I had to throw my toothpaste away just to get aboard a plane to go back to my beloved Michigan for a weekend.

They also won when they convinced our government to start an entirely separate cabinet office just to guard against them. They won when we steadfastly refuse to use our energy more efficiently and continue to fund them through our liberal use of oil, despite all of the public knowledge linking the late Bin Laden and many of his cronies to the oil industry.

10 years and trillions of dollars later, we still fear an attack, a bombing and a threat on a day when we should all pause and remember those whose lives were lost in one of the most horrific scenes of modern time.

I don’t know a lot, but I do know something about fear. When I fear, I am defeated. When I feared on the football field, that same one that turned 100, I was sacked, tackled, threw interceptions, and had my feet collapse underneath me. When I feared in school, I flunked tests, grew anxious, ran out of time on assignments and stuttered during speeches and presentations. When I feared during work, I made mistakes, lost time and had to face an unsatisfied boss. When I fear, I am miserable, unhappy and worthless to the world.

That is exactly the goal of terrorism. Terrorists don’t want to really kill anybody. They want everybody to fear them and in so doing control entire nations and economies. So they have.

So how do you combat a feeling?

“No,” I said. Mrs. Brizendine almost looked shocked. In discussing with the other officers in the meeting we made a bold decision. We were not going to allow our senior year to be defined by a tragedy. We were not going to allow nameless faces who knew nothing about us to define our school that year. We were not going to come back to our class reunions year after year after year to talk about how our Homecoming was about a terrorist attack. We did not want our yearbook, the culmination of our school’s history that year, to tell any other tale other than our own celebration of our history and legacy. So we have.

Because with all due respect to those people who chose September the 11^th to do some form of service work, you should want to do that everyday. You should honor our military, police and firemen every time you see one. Kindheartedness, service and love should not be reserved for times of horror. They should be daily staples in our lives. We should not give those who seek to harm us the dignity of only one day where we all come together as Americans. No, we should do that everyday. Then, and only then, will we ever hope to overcome the fear that they have so successfully entrenched into our lives.

When we as StuCo officers came together and told our administration, “No,” we really told the terrorists, “No.” Refusing to allow my senior year to be defined by September 11^th is, to this day, the most important and proudest decision I have ever made in my entire life.

We, as a country, shouldn’t be defined by it, either.

…and that’s why it’s a Gun’s Quote!