A 400 lb Mistake

I'm posting this here because I can feel a "too-long-for-facebook" thing coming on.

Say what you want about the actual situation involving the little boy and the gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo. Everyone is all worked up about whether the gorilla should have been shot and what the parents were up to and how in the world a zoo even has a gorilla enclosure a little boy could get into. But what I've learned from this episode is, in fact, that it's not okay to make a mistake on the internet and then try to correct yourself.

I reposted that picture that's going around. The one about Harambe, "doing a better job" watching the kid than his parents. But I posted it in an attempt to get attention for my question: Why couldn't they have just sedated him? I didn't think of the picture as a comment about the parents, but as a comment about how surprisingly docile and loving the gorilla seemed to be in the videos I saw.

To clarify: I was never trying to suggest that the mom was at fault. I have a three-year-old boy. We go to the zoo. He has tried to climb in a pit-style cape buffalo enclosure, but has never made it past sticking his head over the wall and lifting one foot. My three-year-old sometimes scares the hell out of me with how quickly he goes from being right by my side to being in the middle of the street (I might not even want to take him outside if we didn't live on a quiet street) or halfway down the escalator at the mall. I can imagine how a kid his age gets into trouble like this, even with vigilant parents. And I said as much in the first comments on my post.

Before I made that post, I looked at four different articles (accompanied by videos) about the incident and came to the conclusion, based on the text and the video combined, that he was protecting the kid and being incredibly nice. It was obvious that the videos were edited, but it has only since come to my attention that what was cut was the scary part. Interestingly, the news outlets were choosing to take the edited video and write about the incident as though nothing dramatic happened.

So, it turns out I was wrong. The gorilla did do some dangerous and scary stuff with the little boy. Watching the full video made me uncomfortable. But my question still stood. Why couldn't he have been sedated?

Harambe was a healthy and impressive representative of an endangered species. In my original post, I said, "I understand that the gorilla needed to be subdued in order to extract the kid." but it's sad to lose an individual like that. Why couldn't he have been sedated?

Since my post, Cincinnati Zoo director, Thane Maynard, "has said that tranquilizers may not have taken effect in time to save the boy while the dart might have agitated the animal, worsening the situation. Animal expert Jeff Corwin agreed that tranquilizers may have taken too long."

Okay. The picture was probably insensitive to begin with. I guess I didn't realize how it would be interpreted. I guess I thought of it as more of a joke than an accusation. Then, I was corrected as regards the gorilla's seemingly docile behavior from the first several videos I watched. Then, I got the information I wanted. Both of these things happened within hours of each other. I took the post down.

But I'm still dealing with it.

First, I didn't think anyone really cared what I said. Hardly anyone reads this and as far as I can tell, basically no one pays attention to my facebook. But one of my real-life friends attempted to gently correct me (and others) by posting an article focusing on a bystander who feels that the incident was not the fault of the parents.

I felt I needed to explain my position. I didn't mean to suggest that it was the parents' fault. I was simply pointing out that the gorilla seemed oddly calm and maybe didn't have to die. I just wanted to know why he wasn't tranquilized (this was before I learned why).

The responses to my explanation have been... aggressive. One person points out that I obviously didn't look into it because the video shows the gorilla being violent and tells me, "So congratulations, you called the parents worse than psychotic abusive assholes." But I did look into it. I read four different articles and all of them chose to use edited videos and present the information as though nothing concerning happened while the boy was in the enclosure. I think this is a serious problem we should all take note of. Why were/are so many sources choosing not to tell the whole story? When many different news outlets are misrepresenting the story in the same way, it's hard to know that you didn't do your research well enough.

After I explained the circumstances that lead to my post, this same person goes on to ask me how I would feel if I "had a hand in causing this mother to commit suicide because of all of the hate directed at her."

By this point, I had already taken the post down because the zoo had made a statement, providing the information I was looking for, and I saw the full video, showing the dangerous behavior.

I admitted I was wrong. I took the offensive post down. I made a mistake. It's cool though, deliberately giving me shit on the internet because I made a mistake anyone could have made that almost no one even saw is different from me accidentally giving another mom shit on the internet because she made a mistake anyone could have made that everyone saw.

Seriously, it is different. Because basically no one could even see my mistake, and it was redacted, it's over. I admit I made a mistake. I was insensitive and I apologize. I didn't realize I was wrong or being insensitive, because of the circumstances. In contrast, everyone is seeing this story and they think they know what's going on. News coverage has been leaving out details and people are angry that Harambe had to be shot. They're blaming this woman and the internet is awash with misinformed, unforgiving pointed fingers. I'm just dealing with one of those fingers.

I try to teach my kids that it's important to make mistakes. If you haven't made a mistake or failed at something today, you haven't tried hard enough at anything difficult or new, you haven't put yourself at risk. Putting yourself at risk is important because that is how you learn and grow and where you will find satisfaction and success. But when we make mistakes that affect others, we might need to correct them and apologize.

I corrected my mistake and I am sorry for being insensitive and wrong. I'm glad someone pointed out that by posting that picture, I was lumping myself in with a hurtful crowd.

There are things to be learned from this:

• There are larger problems with news media than I even realized
• It's surprisingly easy to be a jerk on accident
• It's hard to take it back
• Even nice people are jerks on accident sometimes and it's probably important for the accidental jerk and the victim to both remember that
• People who don't know you will judge you and you can't take them seriously. They also make mistakes
• And we should probably never design a gorilla exhibit like that ever again