Those of you who know me are already laughing and thinking “What outrageous thing is about to fly from her mouth?” Wrong. While it started as an intentional form of silent protest, my unassuming act morphed into my best conversation starter in a wide variety of situations.

On May 24, 2022, an eighteen-year-old assassinated 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. (In fact, just this week 911 calls and text messages of that fatal day were released.) The bullet-ridden body of ten-year-old, Maite Rodriguez, could only be identified by the green Converse tennis shoes she’d worn to school that day. As a child advocate and school board president when the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School occurred in 2012, I’d long railed about control of sales of AR-15’s to the regular public. Of course, no one wants to have that conversation.

Following the Ulvade travesty, I not only bought green tennis shoes, but I had my nails painted Kelly green. The reaction from others was instantaneous. Compliments came out of nowhere from random people. Several weeks ago, I was sitting in the lobby of a sporting event when two young women sat down beside me, “I love your nail polish.”

“Thank you. But if you knew the reason, you wouldn’t,” and I told Maite’s story and shared by frustration since Sandy Hook.

“We certainly understand; we’re both teachers at a neighboring school in Newtown, Connecticut. We were in lockdown that day, and we’ve never fully recovered. There isn’t a day we don’t worry about it happening again.” Sad commentary. Twelve years later and still worrying.

I have no intention of changing the color of my nail polish, until some form of gun control is enacted. True, I’ll probably go to my grave sporting green nails, but at least, I’m still talking about the issue. Something politicians have little desire to do.