guns and worms

The shootings at Fort Hood on Thursday were horrific. I watched the news coverage with my family, teared up when they spoke about the victims, and wondered how someone could be so messed up in the head that they would take the lives of others.

On Friday, the violence hit home.

Though I work on the east coast of Florida, I live in Orlando. Other than a four-year stint at UF and two years in Tennessee, Orlando has been "home" since 1997. It's a happy place. We have violence and shootings, just like every other major city, but most are drug related. Nothing (and I mean nothing) has ever happened like this.

Since I couldn't get sound on the live video feed in my office, 65 miles from home, I read as thing unfolded in our local TV station's chat room, where one woman wrote, "Who cares! Do we really need all of this coverage? Just let us know when he gets caught." Have we really become that immune to events like this where we don't even care about our fellow humans? I wanted to know what was going on. I have very good friends that work just blocks away from that building. Several schools are very close by. People needed to know that a killer was still on the loose.

The man that lost his life was only 26 years old. He was engaged and had a 7-month-old baby. That baby will grow up never knowing her father and never understanding why such a heartless human being took her daddy away. The irony of his death is that he wasn't even working at the engineering firm when the killer was an employee there.

What is this world coming to? This sick world where drugs, and guns, and violence are normal. People get angry at other people, so they shoot them. People get fired from a job, so they shoot their former coworkers. People lose their money, so they kill their families.

Lately, the only worry on my mind has been getting pregnant: wondering if I am able to and wondering whether or not I ever will. But if this worry ever goes away, then I get to focus on a whole new can of worms: How to protect my future children from the madness.