She Didn’t Like Mondays

The callousness of those who carry out mass shootings, such a feature of the modern age, particularly in the United States, is something I find depressing and disturbing, especially when motives are almost impossible to determine, or, better said, the professed motives only serve to add to the callousness. More than this, the perpetrators seem to be without any depth, any soul; two-demnsional figures without humanity; they have become computer-generated figures, actors in a video game.

I only discovered that facts in the case of Brenda Ann Spencer quite recently. Who is she? Nobody of any real importance, I suppose. It’s just that in 1979, when she was sixteen years old, she took a rifle, a .22 gifted to her by her father, and went on a shooting spree at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, California.

By the standards of other mass shootings, by the standards of, say, the Columbine Massacre, her escapade did not amount to much, killing ‘only’ two people and injuring nine more. No, that’s not the remarkable thing; it was the reason she gave for the shootings after she was disarmed and in custody – “I just did it for the fun of it. I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day. It was just like shooting ducks in a pond.”

There was no hate, there was no passion; there was no resentment at personal rejection -she just didn’t like Mondays. It’s beyond inhumanity; it reaches into the true soulless shallows of complete dehumanisation; other people only exist at the outer limits of consciousness, objects of entertainment.

Brenda Ann Spencer is still in prison for her crime, and may remain there until she dies. The most apt comment on her actions that day is a song called I Don’t like Mondays by The Boomtown Rats, an Irish band. The lyrics are chillingly precise:

The silicon chip inside her head gets switched to overload
And nobody's gonna go to school today
She's going to make them stay at home
And daddy doesn't understand it
He always said she was good as gold
And he can see no reasons, 'cause there are no reasons
What reason do you need to be shown?
Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays
Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays
Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays
I want to shoot the whole day down

The telex machine is kept so clean and it types to a waiting world
And mother feels so shocked
Father's world is rocked
And their thoughts turn to their own little girl
Sweet 16 ain't that peachy keen
No, it ain't so neat to admit defeat
They can see no reasons 'cause there are no reasons
What reasons do you need
Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays
Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays
Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays
I want to shoot the whole day down, down, down, shoot it all down

And all the playing has stopped in the playground now
She wants to play with her toys a while
And school's out early and soon we'll be learning
And the lesson today is how to die
And then the bullhorn crackles
And the captain tackles with the problems and the hows and whys
And he can see no reasons 'cause there are no reasons
What reason do you need to die, die?
And the silicon chip inside her head gets switched to overload
And nobody's gonna go to school today
She's going to make them stay at home
And daddy doesn't understand it
He always said she was good as gold
And he can see no reasons 'cause there are no reasons
What reason do you need to be shown?
Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays
Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays
Tell me why?
I don't like, I don't like, (Tell me why?) I don't like Mondays
Tell me why?
I don't like, I don't like, (Tell me why?) I don't like Mondays
Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays
I want to shoot the whole day down