They accepted us as one of them.

You know how sometimes you walk into a room and you don't know why you went in there in the first place?

School makes me feel that way all the time.

I don't belong in the whole "high school" thing.

I'm on Student Council, which means I'm required to work the homecoming dance. I bring a big thing of soda, set it on the table with the others, and socialize awkwardly and avoid dancing at any cost.

The Cha-Cha Slide and The Cupid Shuffle are do-able.

Today marks the 8th anniversary of 9/11. I was in the third grade when the terrorist attack happened. I remember very little, but mainly the faces of the people around me. I see my dad, feverously flipping through the news stations. Sitting on the very edge of the chair in the living room that he usually reclined and lazed in. I sat on the floor, watching the different channels flash back and forth. I remember some of the faces I saw. Mainly, I remember knowing one thing, one thing even a slightly confused nine year old can understand-- there were people hurting and there was nothing anyone really could do to stop it.

There was nothing that could reverse.

No universal remote that could rewind pain.

They wouldn't let us go out to recess that day. I didn't exactly know the reason why, but I didn't question. I wasn't really old enough or important enough to question. Someone told me there were snakes on the playground so we had to stay in. I think, another said it was bees. Or, a stray dog that could possibly be dangerous to a group of 200 third graders.

My dad took off his glasses and rubbed his forehead a few times when watching the news.

I moved up to the rocking ottomen and rocked back and forth as the images on the television screen flashed.

He told me to write the words, "Twin Tower Attack" in my homework log. So, I did in my crude third grade scrawl. I either threw away that homework log book, or it is sitting in the drawers in the living room. I'm not exactly sure.

I hate pain. I hate the pain that others feel that I can't take away.

I also hate that it takes so much pain to bring people together and acknowledge each other as fellow people again. Pain makes blinders come off and realizations of humanity and likeness in others set in. Strange isn't it?

I mean, look what Jesus did. His pain brought humanity to it's knees.

A people is more than its faces, but how it treats each other.