A few weeks ago, we had a thread (which I will not remember accurately) about helicopter parents' snooping in their children's journals, social-networking sites, etc. At the time, I said that I hadn't been inclined to snoop, but, I said, Harris and Klebold ...

The general consensus, with which I agree, is that such situations are extremely rare.

This week, I'm dealing with one. A young man has threatened, via Hotmail, to kill a specific person and several unnamed others on a specific date at a specific event I am hosting in my office. It's an annual fund raiser usually attended by about 150 people — the kind of people who attend big-ticket fund raisers on Saturday night. Because of that, a disaffected teen would stand out like a sore thumb, but of course he doesn't have to get in the door to kill someone.

 Through good deductive reasoning, the police know who sent the e-mail. Charges may or may not be pending. They seem certain that he doesn't pose a real threat. He lives in a rural area and has no access to a car, they say, nor does his family own guns.

None of that precludes killing several people, I counter. Now I have learned that the rural area is only three or four miles away, hardly so far that he can't walk to town. As for the guns, break into a pickup, any pickup ... 

He didn't really mean it, the police say. I certainly hope not, but the day after he sent it, he scoped out the recipient — the one to whom he wrote, "i have been watching you for many months and I have decided that you are trustworthy and that i can put you to the test now. ... the reason i have brought you into this game is because you will make it more exciting!" — to see if she was panicked. To me, that is beyond creepy. He had told her that if she alerted anyone, he'd come to her place of employment "on a work day and shoot you and everyone else inside the building," so, while petrified, she was playing it cool. Was he relieved, or disappointed?

Having been identified, he immediately expressed remorse. The more skeptical among us — including the potential targets — are convinced that he's indeed very sorry he was caught. He sent a long, long, loooooooon letter of "apology," saying, "I know I have brought fear, panic, insecurity, distrust, anger, lack of sleep, heartache, tears and sorrow" to the potential victims and to the boy's own parents. What power! What excitement for a teenage boy!

His mother also sent a letter, which began, "This is an opened letter to anyone making judgement on [boy's name]."

Did I mention that he's homeschooled? Otherwise, he might well have threatened a school shooting.

She writes, "I hope that [name] should not be made an example of in any sort of way." 

Paragraphs later, "You know many kids have wrote or will write things that could be just as bad or even worse then what [name] did, the only difference is there was no send button to be pushed. They just wrote it and then throwed it in the trash , and nobody knows what they wrote. While reading his letter I realized that when he talked of using a name he made up, he sent that e-mail out thinking he would be unknown just like others who have wrote things that probably should have never been written and things that were never meant to be acted out, things that had no name or even a made-up name, never to be confronted about it in any way."

But everybody's doing it! And am I the only one whose skin crawls at the phrase, "things that had no name"? 

Clearly, she doesn't believe he had any ill intent, not even to cause that "fear, panic, insecurity, distrust ...." I have to wonder, if he had threatened to kill himself instead of someone else, would she be taking his threat more seriously? This is a mom who does know, now, that her son needs help, and she has chosen to plunge her head right back into the sand, as soon as she's done trying to protect him from the consequences of his misdeeds.

Still later, "[Name] did address [my business] in his letter and I do expect that they will keep that private and will not be made public. I hope that you and the District Attorney agree with me that this whole situation should not be made public. [Name] has a big enough burden and that will not improve anything."

Life is rough. The person he named in his threat has a burden: Fear for her life. I also have a burden: Safeguarding 60 employees, my customers, and — if we decide to go ahead with it — all the people who will come to my office in the near future to support a good cause.

Did he "mean it"? He says not. "I have no intention of harming anyone of you. I never did. I am not nor will I ever be a person who would bring such harm to another being. That is not who I am."

Perhaps not, but he's a person who fantasizes about that, plays at it, and in this instance, did act on it. How sure are we? The police may be relatively sure. For my part, I'm not certain at all.

I'm thankful for my own children, who never brought the police to my door. And to at least one mother out there I would say this: There's a time to snoop. Further, there's a time to address problems head-on. Please do that now, before someone dies and embarrassment is the least of your concerns.