Today...
After coming out of Road to Perdition, I got a whole load of text messages on my mobile phone. This struck me as odd. One of them is voicemail and I get this bad feeling like something has happened. It was Mr Man, telling me that he was okay and that none of his friends had been involved. I was all "Huh?" because he'd been half mumbling.
So I scroll through my phone's inbox and read
wickedcherub's message about a guy being shot and there being helicopters everywhere.
I then call Mr Man for more details and general reassurance. Fortunately, being an Engineering student, he wasn't in the building where the shooting happened, and very few of my friends who were in the building were on the same floor or anything like that.
I was quite distracted for most of the afternoon after finding out about the shooting. I knew that everyone that I cared about was okay, but it just hits you right between the eyes. After the Bali bombings last week, it's just so much closer to home. Not saying that I didn't care about the US or anything, but that was a whole hemisphere away as opposed to (from Bali) a 3 hour flight away from Perth. And a shooting at a university campus? It could just have easily been at Melbourne Uni or RMIT instead of Monash, which is pretty scary.
So yeah. I'm sad that things like this are happening to people and I know it's selfish to say it, but I'm glad it wasn't anyone I knew. But it could have been. So this time, I'm thankful that it wasn't anyone I knew.
So I scroll through my phone's inbox and read
wickedcherub's message about a guy being shot and there being helicopters everywhere. I then call Mr Man for more details and general reassurance. Fortunately, being an Engineering student, he wasn't in the building where the shooting happened, and very few of my friends who were in the building were on the same floor or anything like that.
I was quite distracted for most of the afternoon after finding out about the shooting. I knew that everyone that I cared about was okay, but it just hits you right between the eyes. After the Bali bombings last week, it's just so much closer to home. Not saying that I didn't care about the US or anything, but that was a whole hemisphere away as opposed to (from Bali) a 3 hour flight away from Perth. And a shooting at a university campus? It could just have easily been at Melbourne Uni or RMIT instead of Monash, which is pretty scary.
So yeah. I'm sad that things like this are happening to people and I know it's selfish to say it, but I'm glad it wasn't anyone I knew. But it could have been. So this time, I'm thankful that it wasn't anyone I knew.