A Heck Of A Week For High Schools In MoCo!

Take your pick... Knives, Bombs or Swine Flu! It's been a heck of a week for Montgomery County High Schools!

First, on Monday, one kid at Sherwood decided to deep-six the rest of his high school experience by bringing a knife to school and taking a slice out of another kid. The victim will recover. The suspect - I hear he's already 19 - faces expulsion, but I think that's the least of his worries. He's going to go to prison!

That incident put the rest of the school on lockdown for the rest of the day. My oldest son, Brad, didn't mind that at all, because he was stuck in web design class. He got to goof off on the internet for a couple of hours!

On Tuesday, my alma mater, Springbrook, had a much more serious scare. Two students were rounded up, suspected of setting a couple of small fires at the school... On further review, police uncovered a plot to kill the principal and maim a school counselor, and to start a fire by breaking a gas line in the school auditorium. It was the most Columbine-esque threat we've had in the area in quite some time.

Finally, late last night, the county made a decision to close Rockville High School until further notice, because one of the students there has apparently come down with the swine flu. Mind you, this student has not been in school since Monday, and no one else has become ill. But it's Friday, and I guess the county figures if they have a long weekend to see if anyone else incubates, it won't be so bad.

I personally think this whole swine flu thing is another embarrassing moment for the media, which is overreacting in the extreme, and leading the public to believe the threat is much much greater than it obviously is. At least in the United States, even the people who have gotten sick HAVEN'T gotten THAT sick!

I also blame the public. Somehow - and I'm not quite sure when or how it happened to this degree - people have become totally drawn into a pack mentality. It's almost like people don't have minds of their own any more. Laugh if you will, but the same thing that has people blindly panicking over swine flu is responsible for making Susan Boyle a youtube sensation. It's almost like people don't have the time or the will to make their own discriminating decisions.

The swine flu will pass... as did SARS... as did the bird flu... And the chances that any of you will end up with it are minuscule, so please - grow a pair!

As for the violence, I personally find that to be much scarier. Not the knife incident, per se. The act of kids bringing knives to school is hardly a new phenomenon. I certainly don't condone it either, but pragmatically speaking, teenagers have been doing stupid things for as long as there have been teenagers, so don't expect society to fix the problem any time soon.

As for the threats at Springbrook. That's pretty scary stuff, isn't it? I've had some conversations with some of my fellow alums on Facebook, and most of them say things like, "We were so innocent", or "That never could have happened when we were there". I kinda disagree. I do think kids today are affected by their surroundings. We didn't have violent video games or cable TV or gangsta' rap back in the day. We didn't have the internet or chat rooms or the exposure to the kind of poison that our children today have.

But we did have bad apples. I knew a few kids from grade school all the way through high school who were bad eggs all the way through. We also had kids with "special needs", but we didn't have that label back then. If those same bad kids of my youth had been raised today, they certainly would have been capable to the kind of violence that was plotted at Springbrook.

At least that's what I think. I personally believe we ALL go through life in a constant state of denial. It's an effective coping mechanism, because if we didn't have denial, we'd all have to face the fact that what we've built as our lives could all end without notice. Wiped out by a car wreck. A massacre. A tornado.

Hell - even swine flu.

My Surprise School Reunion!

Note to "Life On The Beach" regulars - Today's entry is a bit of a departure from my normal fare. Instead of bitching about how the arrival of President Obama has done nothing so far to promote bipartisanship (it hasn't), or discussing the Postal Service's desire to go to five-day-a week delivery (a good idea), today I present an essay. It's part of a newly-launched writing project I'm doing with my high school friends on Facebook. Enjoy!



The date was September 8, 1993. I was at a pretty good place in life. I was the morning drive news reporter at WMAL and living in Silver Spring with my wife of three years, Robin. Robin and I had been living in our brand-new townhouse behind Leisure World for just under a year, and we were looking forward to the birth of our first child, who was due sometime around Thanksgiving. We were scheduled, in fact, to start Lamaze classes the following week.

Robin had a pretty rough day at work - not so much because of her job, per se, but because she just didn't feel good. Pregnancy did not agree with my wife. She never did quite get rid of her morning sickness, and she had been diagnosed with pregancy-onset diabetes, which meant she had to test her blood several times a day. Mama wasn't a happy mama! When Robin got home, she complained of feeling like she had to go to the bathroom, but that wasn't it. A call to the obstatrician confirmed that my seven-month-pregnant wife was likely in labor.

We took a drive over to Shady Grove Adventist Hospital to get Robin checked out, under the assumption that they would stop the labor and send her back home. But by the time we got to Shady Grove, it was too late to stop the baby. He or she was coming!

My brave wife allowed herself about 30 seconds of grief before she set her mind to the next task at hand - undergoing natural childbirth without a minute of training for it, We were taken to a private delivery room to await the unknown.

A couple of minutes later, a nurse came in, and introduced herself - "Hello, my name is Sue". I took one look at her, and smiled. "Susan Berenter! It's been a long time!" I had gone to school with Sue Berenter all the way from Kindergarten at Cresthaven through graduation at Springbrook. We had never been close friends, but you don't share schools with someone for 13 years without having at least some sort of bond.

As Sue and I quickly caught up on old times - what I was doing for a living, how long she'd been a nurse, etc., we heard a groan. Oh yes... Robin.

I introduced Sue to my wife, and Sue snapped instantly into professional mode. She did a great job of calming mother and father down, and giving us the five-cent Lamase "pant, pant, blow" course in about ten minutes. Then she went about doing what nurses do before a woman gives birth... Setting up warming trays and machines that go "BING" and all of that other good stuff - all the while encouraging Robin and keeping her calm.

I don't know if every childbirth goes like this, but it did for both of our kids. The nurse does everything until it's time for the Mom to push. Then - and only then - the doctor comes in and basically catches the baby. It was great having Sue as our delivery nurse, even if the reunion was in front of my wife's gaping ... uh, well... you know. It was comforting to me to have a familiar face in the room to help us in a situation we had not expected. And it was comforting to Robin to have someone who was so good at what she did. Sue was a real pro!

Bradley Philip Matthews was born at 1:49am on September 9, 1993 - two months premature, but at 4 pounds, 9 ounces and 18 inches in length, still quite big for his gestational age. Brad was in the hospital for two weeks and had to wear a breathing monitor for six months, but beyond that, he was a real trooper! And we have Susan Berenter to thank for that!

Thanks, Sue - Wherever you are!

Making Myself Younger Is Making Me Old!

After studiously avoiding it for most of my career, I am now belatedly learning the value of networking... that the next person I meet may be the source of my next job. With that in mind, and after a prodigious amount of prodding by my millennial associate, Jen Richer, I have joined the world of Facebook! What an eye-opening experience this has been! In a matter of minutes, I found myself potentially in touch with hundreds of people - many of whom I do not know... and many of whom I'd like to forget! Just by enrolling, it gave me a much better grasp as to the marketing potential and potential reach of social media - how each individual person has the ability now to slice and dice and customize his or her world according to his or her interests, yet at the same time, reach out globally to virtually everyone they've ever known. Surfing around, it quickly became clear just how much of a generation gap exists in the world of communications. I did a search for people in my high school class - Springbrook '79 - and found about a dozen of my classmates have discovered Facebook. By the same measure, I bet if my friend, Jen, did a similar search, she'd be able to account for virtually her entire class!

This whole Facebook affair has caused quite a stir in Chez Matthews. When the Missus heard that I'd signed up, she became immediately suspicious. It's that generation gap thing again.... Robin hears the word Facebook, and it conjures up visions of perverts trying to arrange sex online with cops posing as teenage girls... Meanwhile, when my 14-year-old son found out Dad had a Facebook account, he immediately asked for an account of his own. He was disappointed to learn that Dad signed up purely for "business reasons", and that even in my newly enlightened state, I'm not ready to supervise my OWN account yet, let alone worry about what his hormone-afflicted brain would do with his own page!

There's gotta be a way to marry my traditional media background to this new-ish concept of personal social media. At the crossroads where those two forms meet may very well be where my future career will be waiting... I hope.

Turning On The Wayback Machine...

This afternoon, I had the distinct pleasure of enjoying my first visit to a local tradition - the 37th Annual Sherwood High School Rock N' Roll Revival. This 3-hour extravaganza featured 48 songs performed live by a cast of nearly 200 singers, dancers and musicians, all playing with far more polish than you would ever expect from a high school production. The songs ranged from early-50's doowop to 60's Motown to 70's Southern Rock and Disco and the 80's era Michael Jackson. The most exciting part of the show for me was seeing high school kids having a blast while taking part in a show that requires complete teamwork and a commitment to excellence. Here's a clip from the show:

Of course, this was also a major dose of nostalgia for your blogger, himself a noted high school thespian! Here's a photo of yours truly with high school best bud Brad Krupsaw in the 1979 Springbrook High School production of "The Wizard Of Oz"... He's the Wizard - I'm the other guy...