I Love U Guys

That was the text message Emily sent to her parents while held hostage with six of her classmates at Platte Canyon High School. The last time I saw Emily was ten years earlier, when she and her twin brother, Casey, were playing in the backyard of the Keyes residence.

Their parents were the sort of people I loved to be around--smart, nerdy, compassionate and balanced. Ellen observed that even though both kids were treated equally and without bias toward "things boys do" or "things girls do", their uniqueness emerged nonetheless. Casey loved to play with toy guns, and Emily loved to play with dolls. That was Ellen, observing the difference and measuring it against their influences. John-Michael continuously impressed me with his rare combination of talent, curiosity and intellect. He loved to share his latest discoveries, like the hole he found in MSN's search engine that allowed him to grab all of their data indexed to date.

I moved away, we lost touch. John-Michael and I both suck at making occasional phone calls just to say "hi". They sold his first dotcom business, a search engine, and they moved to the mountains to build their palace and live in the safety of a small mountain community. Every now and then I would poke the internet to see if I could come up with John-Michael's contact info.

The last time I poked, the response was not at all what I expected. Web pages revealed a tragedy of the worst sort. The Keyes family had moved to a small mountain town because it was a safe, quiet. How could something like this happen to them? I was shocked. I tried to reach out, but it was the wrong time. Many months had passed since the tragedy, but it might as well have been a day. I don't know how anyone gets over losing a child to random violence.

Tonight, the telephone rang. It was my friend John-Michael and it was like old times, sharing his latest discoveries, his cool projects. I also learned that he and Ellen formed a foundation to provide tools for schools to better deal with emergencies and to educate kids about the dangers of being too careless with camera phones and internet media. We got just a little caught-up, and left much ground to still be covered.

Tonight I revisited a few of those news articles. My heart breaks when I think about it, because I hold my friends there--in my heart. I don't know how they do it, and I'm sure it's still difficult, and perhaps will always be. Sometimes I think it's easier when you've already been through a loss. I lost my mom when I was a kid. But then again, if I can feel torn up over someone else's kid, maybe it never gets easier. Maybe it's just what we do because we're human, and to do any less would be a sign of illness. I don't know.

Please do me a favor. visit iloveuguys.org and read about what they're doing. If you can help them at all, or get involved in some way, please do. None of us can fix the damage that's been done, but maybe all of us can make the world we live in a little better. Thanks.