A new kind of fear...

A couple of days ago, the evilest of men murdered 27 people at an elementary school in Connecticut. 20 of them were 6 and 7 year old children.
The age Dylan is.
A year or two older than my niece is.
An age where they are still innocent, still wondrous, still trusting.

Long ago, the rest of us were robbed of that innocence and wonder.

We lived through 9-11.
We lived through Columbine.
We lived through the shooting at the Amish school, at the Batman movie, just last week at the mall in Oregon.

We learned that you cannot-should not- trust blindly.

Mostly people are good, but some are so bad that the rest of us simply cannot fathom.

It makes me afraid in a way I never was before, because really, truly, none of us are safe anywhere.

I eye the exits in movie theaters now, like I never did before.

I will linger a bit longer when I drop the kids off at school, watching.

Except we just can't know what we are watching for, can we?

What makes a person snap and how do we head it off? How do we protect kids, ourselves?

Stricter gun laws, less media attention...maybe both, maybe neither.

And that's what makes this so unsettling, so terrifying.

We can ask for answers, beg for answers.

There are NO answers.

20 babies are dead.

20 sets of parents are ruined.

Countless siblings, family members, friends, strangers mourn what happened.

We can't fix it. We can't seem to make it stop happening.