It’s been, um, interesting lately. And the older I get, the more my patience with some things wears. I was only reading this afternoon, that’s all. I’ve seen these episodes of Criminal Minds so many times that I’m starting to recite them in my sleep, so I needed something different.

An article about the scary spiral of gun violence in our country sent me looking into several stories. I was just finishing up the second story about a child shot by another 11-year-old child when – wait, let me state this again. Two separate stories of two separate children shot and killed by two completely different eleven-year-old children. Within the same week. Does that make sense? I know it doesn’t make sense, but can you follow the train of thought there?

I finished that video, tears streaming down my face doing the ugly cry, and I looked at the link in my chat window that had apparently sidetracked a whole office. A woman is suing her nephew for hugging her too hard four years ago and breaking her wrist. He was greeting her out of excitement at his birthday party, exclaiming how much he loved her. He was eight at the time. She was an adult. It wouldn’t be the first, or last, time an excited or roughhousing child would inadvertently hurt a relative or friend. But now, Ms. Broken Wrist can’t hold up hors d’ouvres trays at parties as well as she did before. So she needs to be compensated by a child who is in incapable of making a rational decision, much less holding a job to earn money with which to pay her. Take a look at the story for yourself.

Then read these stories about the child-on-child violence underwritten by negligent parents who were unable or unwilling to provide safe homes for their weapons and their children. An 11-year-old shot his brother while target shooting in Ohio. And another 11-year-old shot his 8-year-old neighbor when she refused to let him see her puppy.

Now can you tell me exactly why someone would deserve recompense for a happy, rowdy child’s actions when these other things are going on around the country? Can you tell me why any court deems this an action worth its time and money? Why are our nation’s taxpayers obliged to allow people like Ms. Broken Wrist to misuse public money and time when it needs to be directed towards fixing real problems? And I’ll bet she, with her cocktail parties in Manhattan and expecting a child to pay her over $100,000, will vote Republican straight down the line and complain about the misuse of “her” taxes. All this while having donated more than her damage awards to her selection of political candidates from the local level up to the highest seat in the land.

And that, my dears, is exactly what is wrong with America.

I didn’t even get to start the other three articles about “gun violence in the last week” that were open in my browser tabs. Not after all that.