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By T. W. Burger

After many years as a reporter covering police, fire and courts, I have decided that our school systems must be required Right NOW to teach our budding inhabitants to always ask themselves this simple question before taking any action whatsoever:

“What happens next?”

I can't tell you how often I have stood in some district magistrate's office listening to a police officer or state trooper read off the facts on which the charges against the defendant were based when it was all I could do not to laugh out loud or shake him (it was usually a him) by the shoulder and ask him what the heck he thought would happen.

Of course, that's the real issue. They rarely do. Think past the moment. Maybe even never.

A case in point: A few years ago, near where I now live, a local man and a friend were driving around in the middle of the night shining a spotlight into the night, looking for deer. I can't remember if they were shooting any. In any case, a game warden pulled them over. The driver pulled a big pistol out of his waistband and announces that "I can't go back to prison."

As it happens, he was wrong. He is in prison now for the rest of his life, I believe, because he killed the game warden. And then he went and hid in his mother's basement. I'm not making this up. Because nobody would look there, right?

More recently...a few days ago in Athens, Ga., where I grew up, a bunch of young men got into an intense discussion in the parking lot of a bar. Now that we live in a world where nobody ever backs down, one of the young guys pulled out a gun and shot three of the others. One was killed outright. Two others are in the hospital, one of them on life support.

As the cool kids now say: WTF?

Is it because some people in our world are simply unable to make the leap to consider consequences? I don't even mean in any moral sense, but a practical one. What? The gun goes boom several times and then you just push the reset button and you're good, a thoroughly blooded warrior ready to expect kudos from your fellow inmates in whatever facility for the violently stupid they've locked you in.

Get a grip. Waldo. There is no reset button, and nobody will remember your name as you molder away in a tiny gray cell. Use your head!

T. W. Burger was raised in town and graduated from Athens High School in 1967, then worked as a driver of everything from fork trucks to garbage trucks,

He is now a semi-retired journalist who resides on the banks of Marsh Creek, just outside of Gettysburg, Pa.