• I am among the generation of kids that got the standardized talks in elementary school to educate us to ‘stranger danger’ in order to make us aware of the potential of kidnapping. I remember faces on milk cartons. • When I was in kindergarten, we became involved in the Gulf War. I was very young, but raised in a house where current events were openly discussed. I knew war was bad and that people violently died. And I knew that not all the people that died in war were the bad guys. • When I was in the fourth grade (and living in Oklahoma) the Murrah Federal Building was bombed and 168 lives were taken. • When I was in the sixth grade, there was a bombing at the Atlanta Olympics. What should have been a celebration of national pride became fear-driven-chaos and embarrassment. • In the eighth grade, there was a premeditated mass shooting at Columbine High School. People my age were killing each other. • On picture day my junior year of high school, I stood in l...