The Morning After

It was kind of shocking to me that the Virginia Tech thing was such a big deal all over the world. I don't know why, but it was. I assumed it would be a big deal here because it happened at one of our "local" schools. But CNNi had it all over last night and this morning; apparently it was top news all over Europe.

What next? I think that's what everyone wants to know. Universities are trying to figure out how to keep this from happening on their campuses. But you can't do that. Conservatives are trying to link this to the fact that this guy was a foreign national. But you can't do that either. Liberals are trying to link this to lax gun control laws in Virginia. But you can't do that either. And so confusion will reign.

My parents were worried about me going off to college in Philadelphia. They thought I'd get mugged, or my dorm/apartment would be broken into, or things like that. To most people, those are the type of risks we can prevent, not some dude shooting up a classroom. Nervousness and terror are so different, but not on the surface. Getting carjacked is somewhere in between, I guess.

I'm trying to think of the scariest days of my life. September 11 was pretty bad, I guess. There were planes circling over my office building and no one knew who was on board. The month of the sniper shootings in 2002 was bad. People would put the nozzle from the gas pump into their tank and then run into the station or hide under their cars. The Home Depot that everyone saw on TV was about a mile from my apartment. That was scary.

But even with all these things, I've never experienced something in my life like those people did yesterday. Where do you even begin if that happens to you?