I should be taking a nap. That’s the story of the past few days. The baby, still feeling a bit under the weather from the surgery and might be for a few more weeks, hasn’t been sleeping well. I missed Friday’s post for no other reason than “I should be taking a nap”, so I did. Today I realized I wanted to, but I really couldn’t let myself out of my own sense of obligation. The downside of working for money from home is you really sometimes can’t fight the temptation to just sleep instead of doing the work. Most days I fight it, and today I won.

With all this news over the George Zimmerman trial, I can’t help but to think that I should be writing a post about my thoughts on the matter. Since focusing my Hubpage on parenting, the blog is left to fend for itself. Usually I try to write about current events, but sometimes I can’t help but to rant about whatever I feel like ranting about on a given day. I keep fighting this battle of “shoulds”. Like, I should do some dishes and laundry while the baby is sleeping. But I chose the readers instead. Also, I choo chooo choo choose you, George Zimmerman.

One thing that bothers me is that when talking about the trial, you only hear George Zimmerman referred to as “Zimmerman” while Trayvon Martin is referred to by his first and last name. I don’t like uneven-ness. I don’t like the double standard, hell even Ted Bundy gets both his names uttered when being spoken about. And I would rather hang out with George Zimmerman than I would Ted Bundy. That’s a minor pet peeve in the whole scenario. Another thing I would like to point out, at the risk of getting readers mad at me, is that I don’t think that George Zimmerman is a racist. Do I think he’s guilty of trying to play a hero and chased after a guy he profiled as a criminal because of what he looked like? Absolutely. If I were walking down the street wearing a hoodie, I can safely say that I wouldn’t have been pursued as a criminal since my translucently pale skin would glow in the dark, giving away the fact I’m a white girl in a hoodie and we’re innocent and never do anything wrong. This isn’t about racism in America, I would even dare to say that this isn’t even about racial profiling in America. This is about a moron that wanted to be in the newspapers as the hero of the day for solving the slew of petty crime in his neighborhood. Well, at least he got his wish of being in the newspapers.

The issue at hand, unfortunately, isn’t really about someone who looks white killing an African-American child. I say really because it is a tragedy and it should be made to light that a kid died. But let’s blame the real culprit here: the law itself. This law needs to be changed, because who’s the next person that is going to get killed and have someone go “well I was just defending myself, he looked dangerous”? It’s similar to the gun debate: it’s not the guns that kill people, it’s the crazy people who are allowed to carry them that do. This law gives people a blank check to do this and walk away with their hands being clean. Next thing you know, Aaron Hernandez is going to say that “Odin Lloyd was going to kill me so I killed him in Florida and used a private jet to get the body up here. According to Stand Your Ground laws, this is perfectly acceptable!” People should be outraged that this guy got a blank check to kill someone. Maybe he should have stayed in his car. Maybe he should have followed him in his car while waiting for the police to properly handle the situation. Maybe Trayvon Martin shouldn’t have fought George Zimmerman. Maybe we should think for a moment what would happen if Trayvon Martin had killed George Zimmerman and gotten away with it because of this law. Maybe we should think about the outrage that would come out of that: “A black thug killed innocent neighborhood watchman who was trying to protect his community”. Maybe we should consider these points. This… this is the Battle of the “shoulds”.