I Don´t like Mondays
Why would you kill someone?
Why would you decide to shoot out of your window and shoot at a stranger?
A 16 year old´s reason was she did not like Mondays.
Brenda Spencer was only 16 years old on January 29, 1979 when she decided to shoot out of her window at Grover Cleveland Elementary School killing two and injuring 8 children and a policeman. As she was hiding and barricading herself at her home after the shooting, a reporter was able to reach her and asked why had she done it.
Her answer: “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day”
Known to be a troubled teenager with a couple of arrests, she lived with her father in poverty after her mother left them; sleeping on the same single mattress as him surrounded by beer bottles. In December of 1978 a psychiatric evaluation arranged by her probation officer recommended that Spencer be admitted to a mental hospital for depression but her father refused to give permission.
When I was little I got disappointed one Christmas when I got a microscope instead of a telescope, my six year old self didn´t know the difference between tele and micro and couldn´t understand why if I wanted to look at the stars I had gotten a weird artifact with blue and red liquids and glass slides. My disappointment is nothing compared to what Brenda must have felt when she asked for a radio for Christmas and her dad got her a Ruger 10/22 semi-automatic .22 caliber rifle with a telescopic sight and 500 rounds of ammunition. When asked why he might have done that, she answered, “I felt like he wanted me to kill myself.”
Instead of giving her the help she needed her father decided to give his teenager daughter a gun she later used to shoot at 11 people, which made her go down in history as the first mass school shooter in modern history.
We live in a society that its easier for people to get a gun than get help.
Do you still think there is not a problem?
Brenda was sad and troubled.
She wanted a radio.
Daddy gave her a gun for Christmas.
She shot 11.
Created for HAVE DIGITAL
