Thousand Oaks

I'm embarrassed to admit this, but my siblings and I used to make fun of the gun warning signs that hung in our school. There were bright yellow signs in every classroom with the phone number of a hotline for reporting weapons at school. They said "See a gun? Save a life! Say something!", and for some reason we thought the Spanish translation was hilarious. We'd randomly turn to each other and blurt "¿Has visto una pistola? ¡Salva una vida!"

This was, of course, before Columbine and before so many other mass shootings, many of them in schools. True, there had been some other random crimes, like the shooting at a McDonalds in San Ysidro when I was little, but for some reason we felt safe at school. This is ironic, because the reason why there were yellow signs in every classroom was the gang violence that plagued our school and community. Our campus was a closed campus, we had a police officer assigned to school, and there were random metal detector checks every class period (security would pick a few classrooms, come draw some names out of a hat, and take us in the hall to wand us for weapons). 

Despite all this, I still felt safe. When violence did occur, including the occasional fistfight in class or in the hall, it was always between gang members and directed to specific targets. I can also think of few instances were weapons were ever involved, which may be why I was not worried about being caught in any kind of crossfire. One summer day when I was sixteen, we heard gunshots nearby. It turned out that a kid my age had been killed in a drive-by shooting at the market down the street. He had been in my sixth grade class, and even at that age was already involved in gang life. He is standing in the front row of our class picture, just a few kids down from me, clad in an oversize black Starter jacket and khaki pants. To my teenage mind, he was a target, and I wasn't. I never felt fear riding my bike past the market, which I did nearly every day. 

One time a massive fight broke out between rival gangs that ended up taking over the quad at lunchtime. That was the one time I remember being scared at school, because the police came and sent everyone home immediately. At least, I remember going home before the last period, but I was curious about this memory and found an old newspaper article about the incident. According to it, the police actually sent everyone home immediately after school, but either way it was scary and I had to go home right away without getting my things from my locker. However, as one other student quoted in the article said, the gang members really were just a few students out of so many others. Most of the rest of us just kept to ourselves and had a great high school experience. 

Thousand Oaks was always the nicer town up the road, where they had a much better mall. We sometimes went to the eye doctor there, and once I attended a Saturday enrichment activity at a school that included activities like dissecting owl pellets. Thousand Oaks felt safe--and now as an adult I realize that it was in part because it was richer and whiter. I would probably still feel safe in Thousand Oaks if I were to go back for a visit. Well, just as safe as I feel anywhere I go these days. I can't joke about the gun warning signs anymore because I now realize that I could be a target. Anyone can be a target. Perhaps this was true back then, but it's even more true now. I wish this wasn't the world that we live in.