Verner column: A ding, ding moment in a parent’s life

Published 12:00 am Friday, March 7, 2008

ASU gunman was bogus, but fear was real
Matthew Haney is probably a reasonable guy who just did a stupid thing. Eventually, he’ll put his English major to good use in some field that requires facility with words and an overactive imagination, such as writing fake memoirs for Oprah’s book club or covering politics for the New York Times.
He’s already gotten a good start with the work of fiction he authored last week at Appalachian State University. Haney, as you may recognize, is the senior who brought the university in Boone to a virtual halt with a report that he had seen a masked gunman in a Pink Floyd T-shirt running toward the campus. As it turned out, the story was as bogus as a talking bear. There was no masked gunman. No Pink Floyd T-shirt. Not even a disgruntled Bee Gees fan.
But nobody knew that when the first news alert moved Monday afternoon on the Associated Press news wire. This is what it said in its entirety: “Appalachian State University has issued a campus-wide lock down after the possible sighting of a gunman near campus.”
Over the years, I’ve read quite a few news bulletins. In a bygone era, before newspapers got pixilated and digitized, wire-service news stories were transmitted over clattering teletype machines that issued a sharp “ding!” to alert editors and copy boys to an incoming bulletin. This signified something beyond the routine mayhem, scandals and outrages that make up the media’s typical fare. When Richard Nixon announced his resignation, it warranted dings. So did the death of Elvis Presley and the assassination attempts on Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan.
These days, computers have changed everything. Stories from the Associated Press and other news agencies stream in cool silence across our monitors, as if composed by ghosts in the machines themselves. There are no auditory cues alerting us that planes have crashed into the World Trade Center or that a hurricane has inundated New Orleans. There’s no need. We’re inseparable from our computers, the cyber equivalent of a Siamese twin, and if we happen to miss a bulletin crawling across the screen, it’ll be reported within seconds on CNN.
The teletype machines disappeared a couple of decades ago, but when I saw the news bulletin about ASU, I felt a definite ding.
That’s where my son goes to college, along with several other students who graduated from high school in Rowan. I read the bulletin again, trying to wrest more meaning from that one sentence. Before Virginia Tech or Columbine, reports of a gunman near a school wouldn’t have merited a mention on the national news wire. What a quaint, distant time that seems to us now.
Ding. Ding.
For a parent, this is the definition of helplessness and vulnerability รณ to feel the earth lurch beneath your feet with the realization that your child might be in mortal danger and yet be completely powerless to do anything about it or even to know what, exactly, might be happening 100 or 1,000 miles away. There was no doctor to call, no emergency room to rush to, no temperature to take or breathing to monitor. Just one lonely sentence on the computer screen, and a drama unfolding in a picturesque little town in the North Carolina mountains.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
I told myself not to panic, and then, panicking anyhow, picked up the phone and began dialing. Even as I did so, I wasn’t sure why. Rationalizing, I told myself that I just wanted to make sure my son knew about the lockdown. Even if I had known more details, what could I possibly have said that wouldn’t already have been obvious? “Listen, son. If you see a guy with a gun, wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt, don’t hit him up for concert tickets.”
In reality, I just needed to hear his voice.
Thankfully, he answered on the second ring in his casual “whassup” voice. He was in his dorm, locked down with everybody else. He didn’t know much more than me, just that classes were canceled for the rest of the day, which meant he had gotten a temporary reprieve on a tough biology test. Did I detect a note of relief there?
By the next day, the real story had emerged. Matthew Haney, the 22-year-old English major, had made the whole thing up in a bizarre attempt to avoid blame for some minor damage to the door of his off-campus apartment. He concocted the tale of a fleeing gunman wearing a ski mask, a Pink Floyd T-shirt and red-and-green shoes. Rather than a psychotic goth, cops probably thought they had a color-blind headbanger on their hands until the story began collapsing.
Along with whatever punishment police and the university deem appropriate, I think Mr. Haney should get the bill for the security efforts expended and also pick up the tab for all the cellphone overages piled up by parents frantically trying to contact their kids.
I’ll give the English major a B-plus for creativity, but in terms of judgment, he was clearly operating on the dark side of the moon.
nnn
Chris Verner is editorial page editor of the Salisbury Post.