Ok, attempting to return to the topics mentioned last night....

I guess the reason why running into Mike Snyder seemed noteworthy at the time is because I had such a raging crush on him during Into the Woods, and it was rather nice to see him and be...unimpressed. That makes me sound like an asshole, but all I mean is that it was pleasant to be able to carry on a conversation with him like a normal human being. Something that became increasing difficult during the show two years ago. Don't really have anything interesting to add on that topic, I imagine anyone reading this either a) doesn't know who mike snyder is or b) does know and has spoken to him more than once in the past 2 years and therefore already has any information that I would be able to pass on from our 60 second conversation last night.

Ok, topic 2, the whole scary Cleveland thing. This was my thought process on the way home last night (yes, I've taken a tragic event and made it all about me, but this is my blog, so that's my luxury): A couple of months into my freshman year I was in an attempted car-jacking, and it absolutely paralyzed me with fear. So much so that for weeks afterwards (good grief, was it months?) I didn't venture more than 2 blocks away from my dorm once the sun had set. What was so terrifying about the whole thing was the complete randomness of it. I had come to Cleveland from a small town, fully aware that there were unsafe aspects to the city, but naively imagining that I could avoid most of them through common sense; by travelling in groups and whatnot. But here I was at 9:30 on a Thursday night, in a car full of about 10 people, staring out the window at a shot gun. It was the powerlessness of the situation that scared me - the fact that there was nothing I could have done to avoid it, that made me fear all other normal, everyday situations for a long time afterwards.
So where am I going with this? Well, this morning it turns out that the gunman in the Peter B. Lewis Building wasn't completely random, but yesterday, when it still seemed like a totally random event, my brain made a connection between my reaction 5 years ago and 2 days ago. The apparent randomness of the violence at PBL prevented me from being scared. I didn't think twice about driving toward that section of campus yesterday, I didn't feel less safe going out last night, I didn't imagine that when I go to campus in the future I run the risk of being held hostage. And I just wondered what had changed, what living in Cleveland has done, to make those two reactions such polar opposites. I don't have an answer, and it probably isn't an interesting ponderable for anyone else, but there it is.