When your kids are in the line of fire

Thu, 10 Oct 2002 19:18:00 +0000

By Friday of last week, six people had been randomly and fatally shot by a seemingly invisible spree killer. One of the victims was a woman vacuuming her car less than a mile from where I live. That day, I was pushing two carts of groceries through a supermarket when my cellphone rang. It was a close friend, a woman supposedly en route from New York to our home outside Washington.

She, her husband and their two young children were coming to visit for a tourist weekend, and I brightened at the sound of her voice. "Hey, we're in Philly," she said, "and we're sort of freaked out."

I stopped moving the baskets. "Why? What's wrong?"

There was a long pause, and then she spoke slowly, the way you address small children when you want to Make. Sure. They. Are. Listening.

"The shootings," she said, with a touch of incredulity. "It looks like your house is right in the middle of them."

Oh. That.

Our home was indeed in the midst of the tragedy that began officially the night of Oct. 2 when a 55-year-old man was shot and killed in a parking lot and became full-fledged bedlam on Thursday, Oct. 3 when five more people were killed. (That was before the killer had widened the circle of his bloody sport south to Fredericksburg, Va., and east to Bowie, Md.)

Salon.com > Beth Frerking

When your kids are in the line of fire