Zig-Zag Running
Zig-zag
running? That’s the style of running my four-year-old granddaughter learned in
pre-kindergarten last week. Zig-zag running is the pattern you use when you run
from the school building. You have a meeting place away from the school where
your teacher and the other children will gather. To get to your safe place, you
run in a zig-zag pattern.
The
sighs and groans in my heart are almost too heavy to lift out of my psyche and
put into words. I will try. I know why she and the other children are taught to
run that way, although I doubt the teacher told them: A moving target is harder
for a bullet to hit.
When
I was a child, I was afraid of war with the Russians. I had nightmares of bombs
being dropped on me. Duck-and-cover drills were the staple of emergency
preparedness for my generation. My class didn’t have a “safe place.” We had the
walk (not a zig-zag run) to the railroad tracks to board trains that would
evacuate us from Jacksonville, Florida, a prime target because of the military
presence there and its proximity to the Russian missiles in Cuba.
My
fear was the Russians and the nuclear bombs they might drop on my home, my
family, and my friends. My fear was an out-there fear; it was the fear of “them,”
the others, those who weren’t Americans, the Communists who didn’t share our
values of freedom and liberty and justice.
My
fear for my granddaughter isn’t a fear of “them.” And that’s what is so
chilling. My fear for her is “us.” It’s Americans—overwhelmingly white male
Americans—who have made it necessary to teach four-year-olds zig-zag running
from schools.
The
character Lara in Dr. Zhivago, when
speaking of the brutal revolution in Russia, knowing it would continue, knowing
she and Yuri would be separated, knowing the carnage would not end anytime
soon, said, “Oh, Lord—this is an awful time to be alive.”
When
I think of zig-zag running, I agree with Lara.
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