"It ain't fair, you died to young.
Like a story that had just begun,
but death tore the pages all away.

Would you see the world,
would you chase your dreams?"

It was at some point in the early morning, as I slept on the reclining arm chair we had in our living room back then, that my mom tapped me on the shoulder and said words that are burned into my head some 12 years later: "She was pronounced dead a few minutes ago."

On the morning of April 15, 1998 we were celebrating Spring Break in Seattle. For today's standards that would seem like an unusually late break, but back then it was pretty normal, especially for a public school district. I had been helping a family friend move, which was good money and something to keep me out of trouble. I remember that it was hot, which was nice since it often rains throughout April.

I was in fifth grade at the time, already enrolled for sixth grade at Whitman Middle School, where Sophy Kahn went to school, along with most of the other friends that were older than me and had gone to the same elementary school. All of us bused way out of our neighborhood, far away from low income housing, crime, drugs and anything else you can imagine, to schools that were very nearly suburban and certain a world away.

That day started early, probably 8 am (I was 11 on Spring Break - that's early) and I had walked the half mile or so down to the family friend's house. By about 9 am, I had come back up to the new place, which was (and still is) a block down the hill from my mother's place. Less than an hour later I stood outside of an apartment across the street from mine, next door to another of my closest friends, as stretchers rolled out the front door.

We all lived literally a block front what was then, and is even more so today, the largest trauma center in Pacific Northwest, Harborview Medical Center. At the time, I think it was the only hospital in the city that treated gunshot wounds. There were a lot of them.

Daisy, who was a year younger than me, survived after hours of surgery. Their mother would die, and Sophy, who was shot in the back of the head while trying to run away, would be pronounced dead a few minutes after midnight. Twelve years later those words still ring in my head like they were just spoken to me.

Where I grew up, gun violence is common. Drugs, alcohol, fights, crime, you name it, it happens. Sophy was part of this group of four girls, all the same age, all went to school together. I've never known what happened to all of them. After this happened everyone sort of disappeared. Even I almost completely stopped hanging out around anyone but my four friends I played baseball with in the neighborhood, one of which later died in Iraq. Otherwise I stayed as far away as I could. But I do know that a younger brother of one of the girls was convicted of the murder of a cab driver a couple of years ago. That kid never had a chance.

But this was different. This was a close family friend. It wasn't a drug deal. It was the things at your core are rocked. In that neighborhood there are few people that actually trust anyone around them, but you have to find someone you can put faith in. When those people do these things, it can completely change your outlook on life.

Sophy was not the first or the last person I knew to die in a violent crime. She isn't the only person that was my age at the time, either. But there are very few that I remember so vividly, for many reasons, but mostly because of how everything changed afterward. And for those words my mother said to me.

I don't want anyone to think you ever get "hardened" by being around death so much. Or even that it makes you a markedly different person. Everyone has experiences which shape them. But I remember when I was a freshman in college watching a debate with Tim Eyman, sponsor of the anti-Affirmative Action bill. He said, "if the only thing you've ever overcome are the setbacks you were born with, you haven't done much." Tell that to someone who, instead of being in that coal mine last week, worked their way out of their small West Virginia town and away from a preordained life as a miner. And to my friend Stanley Daniels, who didn't choose to be born to a crack addict mother or raise his eight siblings.

Or tell that to Michael Oher, whose story is well known now. But before you do, consider this quote: "Michael's gift is that the Good Lord gave him the ability to forget. He's mad at no one and doesn't really care what happened. His story might be sad, but he's not sad."

That's where I am. And that's why I'm just like you.

"The world breaks everyone. And afterward, many are strong, at the broken places." - Ernest Hemingway


I've got nothing else for you today. Pay your taxes.