Canzano: Not even March... but madness is all around

Shooting at a championship parade mars event.

Super Bowl parade in Kansas City marred by shooting.

I suppose it’s my job to write about sports. I’ll try. But if this column were an offensive snap in a football game, I’d have been flagged for several false starts.

My thoughts keep getting interrupted by the absurdity: A shooting? At a championship parade?

I suppose it’s no less sad and tragic than the ones we’ve seen over the years at movie theaters, shopping malls, and schools. My wife still gets glassy eyes every time the kids come home from school and report they had a “lock-down” drill.

What were your biggest worries in the second grade?

Police in Kansas City are working to determine who opened fire at the Chiefs’ Super Bowl victory rally on Wednesday and what motivated the shooting that killed one person and wounded 22 others, more than half of them children. Authorities have detained three people. It was the 48th mass shooting in the United States this year.

I am not here to offer “thoughts and prayers.” I’m sick and tired of it. I’m exhausted by the never-ending shootings, the children caught in the crossfire, the politicizing of tragedy, and the way we all go back to not caring a day or two after.

Not a terrorist act, police in Kansas City were quick to say.

Sorry, but if you bring a gun to a city parade, pull it out, and start firing, that’s about as “terrorist” as it gets for me. I know what the police meant. But like the rest of you, I’m out here living life and we’re running out of safe places to take the kids.

Every time I walk into a movie theater, I look around. I study the exits in restaurants and churches. I’m the guy on high alert at a shopping mall, too. I was at Clackamas Town Center Mall in 2012 when some pathetic soul walked through the doors of Macy’s, headed toward the food court, and opened fire with an AR-15. He fired 17 shots, killing two people, and wounding a third.

One of those killed was Steve Forsyth, whose son Alex played football at Oregon and is now an offensive lineman in the NFL.

I think about Steve and his family every time I’m at the mall.

My wife loves parades. As a kid, she participated in the Rose Festival’s Grand Floral Parade in Portland. She relishes the Starlight Parade, too. They’re bonding events. We’ve frequently sat on a curb watching our children draw with chalk on the street, waiting for floats.

On Wednesday, my wife said: “Parades were part of the fabric of my childhood.”

Kids in Kansas City will remember them, too.

The mayor of Kansas City declared that his city would keep doing them. Mayor Quinton Lucas said there are still plans for a parade on St. Patrick’s Day. I wonder how many families will decide to sit it out. I wonder how many others will show up, but enjoy it a little less amid anxiety and fear. And I fear how copycats might view a parade as a fresh, high-profile target.

“We have parades all the time. I don’t think they’ll end,” the mayor said. “Certainly we recognize the public safety challenges at issue that relate to them.”

I grew up in a small agricultural town — Gilroy, Calif. It’s located south of San Jose and is known as the “Garlic Capital of the World.” I smile when I see Christopher Ranch garlic in my local grocery store. I knew the Christopher family. Everyone did. Gilroy was that kind of place.

The Garlic Festival was born from pride. The annual three-day event celebrated our tight-knit community, its agricultural identity, its people, great food, and live music. The event benefitted local charities, schools, clubs, and groups.

I attended the very first Garlic Festival as a young boy in 1979. I went to the first 20 of them, volunteering in my teenage years. I’d work shifts and find my friends at the amphitheater and food tents afterward. It was the highlight of our summer. More than 100,000 people attended annually. Then, a couple of years ago — during the 41st event — a 19-year-old cut a hole in a cyclone fence, carried in an assault rifle and started shooting.

Three dead, including a 6-year-old boy.

12 other people were injured.

The Garlic Festival ceased operations. Organizers blame it on the pandemic and poor economics, but we all know what killed the Garlic Festival. Try getting event insurance and marketing a family-friendly community event after a mass shooting.

I’ve covered sporting events for 30 years. I thank the stadium security guards who stop me and ask to look in my backpack. I don’t mind waiting a few extra minutes to pass through a metal detector, either. I wonder how safe we ever really are, though.

I covered the Athens Olympics in 2004, where the military carried machine guns and guarded the venues, media village, and athlete village against terrorist attacks. The Greeks parked tanks outside the gates as a show of force.

I wonder if the administrative assistant who works the front desk at my kid’s school should drive one to work. A tank in the championship parade? Would it deter anyone? I think not. There were 800 uniformed officers on the scene in Kansas City. It’s a tall order to ask them to control a crowd of 700,000 that eventually swelled to a million.

I’m supposed to write about sports, so I will. I’ll tell you that I look around during the national anthem and hope nobody gets hurt. Every game. Every stadium. I study the crowd in that solemn moment that celebrates our country. I jump when fireworks go off and cannons are fired — all the time. And I wonder where in the world we’ve gone wrong as a society. We lead the world in tragedy.

It’s not even March, but the madness is all around us, isn’t it?

A personal dispute, police in Kansas City said.

Not a terrorist act, they say.

So why don’t I feel any better?

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