Six years ago today, I got a phone call from a scared little boy – my scared little boy – saying that there were kids shooting people at a school somewhere close to home. He couldn’t remember the name of the town, but knew it started with an “L”. Loveland, Longmont, Littleton, something like that. He was home, but was worried that they were going to come find him. He didn’t know that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were already dead, but he knew that the incident had happened in our county, somewhere near Denver. Somewhere close to home.

My fiancée, Lannette, just purchased and transplanted these pink columbines last weekend. Considering the timing, I think they were an appropriate choice. They’ve always been some of my favorite flowers.

The scared little boy from 1999 is now 16, and is lying in an MRI chamber as I write this. He just came out, in fact. I’ll update this later tonight.

Later …

Keith has had trouble with seizures for a couple of years now. In February, I witnessed one, and we decided we needed to do something about it. That emergency room visit was the beginning of what is turning into a long, expensive diagnostic process. Hopefully this MRI will give the doctors some explanation for why Keith has these seizures.

Days like the Columbine and Oklahoma City Bombing anniversaries always make me think about how precious my kids are. Logan is the same age now that Keith was when Columbine happened. What is going to be the memorable trauma in his childhood? He doesn’t really remember 9/11, and though Lannette survived the Oklahoma City Bombing while pregnant with him, he doesn’t remember that any better than I remember riding the teacups at Disneyland while in my mother’s belly. Whatever trauma Logan has to face in the future, I hope it happens far enough away from him that he can experience it in safety.