One of my two or three best friends in the world is a grad student at Virginia Tech. Yesterday morning he was supposed to be in the engineering building of Norris Hall that we all know quite well today to assist in teaching an undergrad class. He just happened to be running ten minutes late, arriving just as a massacre was waning.

I'm in the middle of a three month long road trip that will put me in Blacksburg to see my friend a week from today. One week and I'd have potentially been strolling a campus that became a sudden, unexpected war zone.

Sometimes a course of events can affect your life for its duration, as it has the friends and family of at least 33 individuals. Sometimes...sometimes it can simply scare the shit out of you.

It has scared the shit out of me.