Childhood memories

I was eleven years old when Laurie Dann entered Hubbard Woods elementary school and shot six children.

I remember being in school, a Montessori school in Lake Bluff, and the teacher had turned the radio on so we could hear what was happening.

This, it feels like, is one of the first significant tragic memories I have. It was scary because it was so close to home. It could have happened to anyone. And who goes to a school to shoot children?

It's funny, because I haven't really thought about it at all in the past twenty years but every time I hear about school shootings I think of Laurie Dann. It's just a flash, and until today I had forgotten her name, actually. But all of these horrible shootings in the news that seem to happen with more and more regularity and it always, without fail, makes me ping back to this event.

I don't know why I'm telling you all this. It is, of course, a huge deal, especially to everyone who was immediately effected by the shootings.

I guess, I don't know. People remember horrible things from their childhood- the assignation attempt on Reagan (like him or not, when you are a little kid and someone tried to shoot the *president* that is a scary thing), the Challenger exploding on lift off, and the like.

This is my horrible thing- the thing I remember more vividly then the others. It's possible that there is something else I can't think of, but as I can't think of it, this is it.

It's strange how things resonate years later.

Hi. Hello. Hi.

Well, I just wrote and deleted and entire post. It was very boring. Mostly it was: I'm still sleepy, trying to get out and run errands, had lunch with disbelief11 (which was not boring at all and she rocks and gave me bread YUM!), will have missed about 13 days of work when all is said and done and am cleaning quite a lot because I am moving next month, place to be determined when I can stay awake for more then an hour and a half.

How is everyone else? How are things?