School shootings. My first play was a skit I wrote for the eighth grade play... the call went out for students to write comedy sketches, and I was the only one to respond. I wrote an adaptation of a friend's story as well as my own sketch and the teacher/director liked mine and used it alongside such greats as A. A. Milne, Eric Bentley, and Abbot and Costello.

My point is not to point out how wunderful my first play was, but to consider whether it would have been produced at all today. I can't remember what it was called--maybe "The Pearly Gates Association"?--but it was set in heaven, where a recently-killed individual confronts the Secretary of Heaven, who comes from New Yawk and has an attitude. It got a reasonable number of laughs, I think. Anyway, the lead-in showed the actual Death scene--the conceit was that the two guys who did "Who's on First" at the beginning were feuding throughout the show, and one of them shoots the other (offstage, but we did see the gun and hear the shots), which segued nicely into my skit. Now, in today's America, I doubt showing one eighth grader shooting another would fly.

But should it have, even then? I don't pretend to know the answer to that, or to even have an opinion. It's just something to wonder about.

Incidentally, I seem to have been fascinated with death in those days. Also in eighth grade, I wrote a short story called "Established A.D. 1" which dealt with the death of the main character. (This time he took a train to the afterlife.) What was going on back then, and how did I get past it?