Tuesday, June 24, 2003

In my hometown, it’s not rare to see people have their parties in front of their homes. They attach cables from one house to another, even across a street. From those cables they can hang ornaments or even piñatas. Of course, there’s a problem with all that: the street is blocked, not allowing the normal flow of traffic.

When I asked my mother why she, too, would have a party on the street, she said “Those who want to drive to the other side of town can make a detour.” True, only a couple of cars go through the street in a day (it’s a small town), but still.

There’s a man doing time in some prison in Mexico for running over schoolchildren who were holding some activity on a street. The incident took place a year ago. Back then, I thought the man had accidentally stepped on the gas when he meant to hit the brakes, or something of that sort.

Today I saw the video-footage again and I saw the man getting off his truck, talking to one of the teachers, and returning to his truck. The man must have asked them to make way for him to go through. The teachers must have ignored him. He drove through the crowd.

I can see myself in that man’s shoes. I, too, would have been enraged. The teacher should have taken this man seriously. But she didn’t. Some people fail to realize that all it takes is a bad moment for a small nuisance to cause someone to go berserk. This man must have been experiencing a bad moment, encountered a small nuisance, and he went berserk. Two children are dead.

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