Richie Baker

When my 5th-grade daughter and her friends play, I can't help but think how young they are. They seem younger than I did at their age, but perhaps that's just a mother's delusion. Perhaps I see them as more naive and innocent because I want to see them that way. I may be deluding myself, but they don't seem as worldly as we did long ago when I was a 5th grader in a much faster crowd.

Some of the girls in my 5th grade class were already becoming sexually active. Many were smoking. I'm sure some were doing drugs, though I didn't run in those crowds. It was all heresay. One indisputable fact is that some of the 5th grade boys were playing with guns. That's how Richie Baker died -- playing Russian Roulette with another 5th grade boy.

I remember hearing the news the next day at school. My friend Lisa had had a crush on Richie. Back in those days, we said they were "going together," though I don't know what that loose definition meant. I do remember Lisa crying and missing school. I do remember that she seemed changed after that; a little more reckless and further distanced from my circle of friends.

I don't know how many people remember Richie Baker. His death was announced and then we never spoke of him again. There was a picture of him in the yearbook and a dedication "in Memory." But he was never spoken of. There were no grief counselors setting up shop to help the rest of us make sense of his death. I think it was soon followed by the tragic Who concert in Cincinnati and all seemed a sign of the times. So different than today.

My daughter and her friends seem so much younger than we were at that age. They're so much more sheltered and unworldly. Thankfully so. They seem more immature, but perhaps I actually have it backwards. Maybe my class was the one that was naive and immature. I don't see today's 5th graders playing Russian Roulette and smoking at the bus stop. Or perhaps my rose-tinted mother goggles are thicker than I realize.