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I’m not sure where to start.  I feel deeply affected by the shootings at Virginia Tech.  I myself work for a company the provides student housing with one of our main selling points being the security provided in our buildings.  I first learned of the shooting while walking thru the lobby of the residence where I work which had it’s large screen TV tuned to CNN. 

The victim I feel the most affected by is the Jewish teacher who survived the Holocaust.  Every time I think of the horror that he survived, I can’t imagine what could have possibly been going thru his head while he died.

And the kids, just kids, who we keep being reminded by newscasters how spectacular they were…and how we will never know how spectacular they would have become.

Then my mind turns to the shooter.  It seems that there were many warning signs and signals.  Calling himself “the question mark”, freaking girls out, freaking his english teacher out with disturbing writings.  And, finally…the manifesto that he took the time to mail to NBC in-between his killing sprees.  I just wonder what went so wrong in this kid’s head that he needed to shoot and kill 32 people before turning the gun on himself. 

I was living in Milwaukee when Jeffery Dahmer’s murderous spree was discovered, I even knew one of his victims, and hate to admit that I was not sad when he had his head bashed in while in prison.

But, this kid is affecting me in an entirely different way.  And, maybe that is because I am older and have developed a deeper sense of compassion for people.  I don’t know if it was a cultural issue, a mental health issue, or if he was the evil lunatic that the news is trying to make him into.  By my heart is broken thinking that this kind of tragedy even exists in the world…and that a deeply disturbed kid would have to take 32 lives along with his own just to prove that point.

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