My Christmas Wish

My sweet hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee is starting to look more and more like a large metropolitan city. Not because of increased population or additional buildings or professional sports teams. The thing that makes it look more like Chicago or Nashville or Memphis is this: violence.

In two days, Knoxville had five shootings, with two deaths and two of the city's finest injured. Four of those five were connected and are assumed to be gang related. Gang related?? In Knoxville?

When I was a child, back in the Stone Age, the only gangs we knew about were the ones on the ball field or in a backyard treehouse. Sure, there was violence, but shootings were few and far between. Most crime was petty stuff. The biggest crime in the area involved bank fraud. Not a victimless crime, certainly, but nowhere near the scale of gang violence.

The fifth shooting occurred at a local sports store. A suspected shoplifter was chased into the parking lot by police working the "Holiday Shift." The suspect failed to stop and got into a vehicle, which he used to run over one officer and hit another. The first officer shot into the car, killing the suspect.

Now, I don't know about you, but there is NOTHING in a sports store, or any store for that matter, that would be worth losing my life for. If the suspect had survived, he would have faced lengthy sentences for the attempted murder of the officers, but by simply giving in when first asked, he would have faced a minimal sentence for the charge of shoplifting. Wow. I wonder how his family feels about his choice?

I guess I'm getting older, but I really don't understand all the anger and violence in the world today. Especially not in my hometown. East Tennessee is a region of unbelievable natural beauty and a slower way of life. Southerners are gentle and soft-spoken and friendly. What happened to that?

As I sit here, three days before Christmas, I feel especially nostalgic for "the old days." When gifts were less important than family; when stores closed for Christmas (and Thanksgiving and Easter); and when Christmas trees were real and the boogie man was fake. Most importantly, when mothers and fathers didn't have to worry about burying their 15-year-old son the day after Christmas.

For Christmas this year, I only ask you for one thing - love. Not for myself, but for the world. Yes, it's a pie-eyed idea and corny to the extreme, but it is my heart-felt wish. In return, I promise to give you the same. Unconditional, unrelenting, unmistakable love. I promise to spend the next year bringing you stories of joy and happiness and the crazy lives around us. And if I fail, let me know. Because you...all of you...are my family. And I love you each and every one. God bless.