How quickly lives can change

I don't know any of the parties involved in the fight at Emricson Park a week ago on Thursday night or who were at the ballfield on Friday night, but yesterday I was thinking how quickly lives have changed. Irrevocably changed.

Kids think they are "bullet-proof"; i.e., nothing serious will happen to them. Or they don't think, which is probably more often the case.

Certainly the lives of the family of the young man who died following a bodily collision during a softball game have changed in ways most of us will never be able to imagine. One day he was running around; the next, a funeral is being planned. The details of that Friday, the day after the beating and before the ballgame, will emerge. Careful investigation by medical and police personnel will uncover whether Bill Vahldieck complained of injury(ies) during the day.

And the lives of Steven Vasquez-Gomez and Michael Dunn, Jr. have changed irrevocably. The details of Thursday night's fight at Emricson Park will be examined under a microscope. As I understand it, there were many witnesses. Perhaps as many as 15. When these kids are separated and grilled on the fine points, a story of what actually happened will become clearer. Maybe not clear, but clearer.

Beating up a young man who dies a day later should produce a life-long question of whether the Thursday night beating had anything to do with his death, regardless of any findings by the Coroner or other medical examiner.

This isn't a matter of a few stop sign tickets or some tickets for a loud sound system in a car. Being involved in a serious fight, regardless of how it started, is a matter for serious self-exploration. Apparently, a verbal exchange occurred and, a short time later, the parties met at Emricson Park to "settle" it. That night will now be burned into their memories - forever.

In our schools, are kids taught to consider the importance of their words and actions? At home, are they taught that? Not very well.

And yet, how important is this?

It's called Conflict Resolution. The schools know who needs to learn it. It starts with small matters and escalates. Do the schools, which have charge of our kids for more hours than most parents see their kids, take a pro-active stand in meeting these issues head-on? Or do they handle them one-at-a-time, put them aside and move on to the next?

Who tracks the problem kid? Who says, if we don't get this stopped now, this kid is going to have, and to be, a huge problem.

Even though these incidents happened off school grounds, District personnel had better be taking a close look at them.