Real life 'Calvin' arrested--UPDATED

Here's a story that is just plain frustrating. On the one hand, it's about a normal kid who daydreamed his school was being overrun by zombies. We've all done this to one extent or another. How many times have we laughed at this behavior when it was played out in a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip?

On the other, it's about a troubled kid whose fantasies about violence against parents, teachers, and police were so strongly felt they had to be written down. We've seen the warning signs before. How many Columbines must happen before we start taking these kids seriously?

The kid wrote what he calls "a story for English class" into his journal. His grandparents found it and called the police. No doubt, they were worried. Probably as much for themselves as for the school. And we see the police are missing no opportunity to appear determined to make us safe, arresting and charging the kid with "terroristic threatening."

This is what all those school shootings and 9/11 have done to us. They've made us hypersensitive to "potential" threats. We're a society shaking in its shoes. Jittery, reactionary, eager to incarcerate. And terrified of our own kids.

But then again...if the kid went on to commit some act of violence at school, the same folks excoriating the officials now would rake them over the coals for not doing something about it when they had a chance.

In the end, it's all way too close to thought-policing for my comfort. The kid took no action to carry out his fantasy. He enlisted no cohorts, he bought no materials, he did not publicize his ideas in any way. You'd think a "terroristic threat" would have to actually be communicated publicly in some way... Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I prefer the days when you actually had to DO something to get arrested.

UPDATE NOTE (4/2/05): The above was based on news reports in the days following the event. New information was revealed in court that most of the reports were factually false. The kid had actually created his own "trenchcoat mafia" and had written down fairly explicit plans to commit acts of gun violence in the community. I should have done a follow up, but never got around to it and now the story is cold. What irks me most is that I got suckered by a media chain of one false story getting repeated unchecked by all the other (lazy) media. Just because a story is widely reported doesn't necessarily mean it's widely investigated. Too often one news story simply gets retold over and over. This is what happened here. It should be noted that the second, more factually revealing story did NOT get spread like wildfire. Maybe that's just one of those typical cases where the follow-up gets ignored. But my suspicious nature makes me wonder WHO was the source of the initial story. Because, the story that got spread made the police and community look paranoid and reactionary. A truthful telling of the event would make the kid look obsessed with guns and a threat to decent society. I'm beginning to suspect the first story was an obfuscation by pro-gun activists to divert focus away from the central issue: we need to keep guns out of the reach of crazy kids. But that smacks of common sense, and the gun-activists want no part of that discussion.