Tragic

There is so much to say that I don't even know where to begin.  Perhaps it can best be described as a downward slide in mood...a disillusionment that I wasn't aware could happen.

My ex got caught acting as the "Tooth Fairy" last week.  So not only has my daughter been recently affected by the misuse of a Twister Box, but she has also lost any faith that the Tooth Fairy is real.  She told her dad that her friends had told her the truth, but she had ideas of her own.  She's been with me the past week or so, and hasn't said a word about the discovery.

I find it sort of tragic.

Tragic was the word I was stretching for to begin this thought.  Tragic then became part of my weekend when I found a little girl (about my daughter's age) crying in the dark at the gym where I teach classes. It was easy to miss her, of course, as she sat in the back corner next to the water fountain.  The group exercise room was dark, and there was no one but her in sight.  I sat down with her on the floor amongst the weight stacks and asked her what was wrong. She told me that she had gotten in trouble for saying something bad. The full story was earnest enough, and I told her I understood why she'd be so upset about it.  Of course I asked about her parents too.... whom must also be at the gym somewhere.  No.  She explained that her mother had dropped her off.  I grew rather uncomfortable, as I couldn't imagine leaving my child that age at the gym by herself.  After much investigation, I found out the girl was twelve, and for some reason, there's a rule that a child can be 12 to workout on his or her own. This rule was obviously reinterpreted by one of the gym staff.  Twin girls of a single mother are basically living at my gym because the mom has no safe place for her daughters while she works.  So, at 8am I have two twelve-year-old girls that bound into the exercise room when I teach on Fridays.  One has already told me about being touched inappropriately by one of the member boys.  I'm obviously livid. I'm not sure "safe" is how you would describe a gym that hosts swim meets and basketball games, where any stranger can swoop up a lonely child and no one would notice.  Somehow that is "safer" than even leaving these two girls at home.  I'm working out a solution on that one, but there are no good answers.  It's more like a lateral thinking puzzle or trying to find the best of one's worst options.

And one further blow was the news of a massive shooting this weekend in my hometown.  It was an act of rage against homosexuals, I guess. Though the more details that come to the surface about the shooter, it's harder to discern if it was a terrorist hate crime or just an enraged sociopath. Regardless, it has been named as the worst mass shooting ever in the United States.  That has added to the discord of this week.  I cancelled or subbed my Monday classes, and managed to make it through one class today.  I'm physically back on schedule, but mentally I'm somewhere else completely.