Thursday, February 3, 2011  “I’m not dead yet.”  "I'm not dead
yet."              That was the phrase I repeated into my cell
phone countless times as a teenager when I would call my mother.
She always hated it and told me she wished I would stop and I
have to admit that I persisted with the phrase because of her
discomfort. My mother's greatest fear, it seemed, was so ever
present and constant that I couldn't help but find it absurd. My
mother was afraid of me leaving the house.              My mom's
fear was silent at first. It was the unnoticeable flinch as the
eight-year-old model of me raced bikes or the wistful look as
she dropped me off at a friend's house. These were small, more a
mother's worry than anything else. But as I grew older her
concerns became a phobia. And as the city around us changed her
phobia became justified.              With each successive year
of my high school career a disturbing trend emerged throughout
the city of Chicago. Public School students were more and more
often victims