More on the NIU Horror

Still somewhat numb because of Valentine's happenings at Northern's campus. That night, I was planning to watch the St. Valentine's Day Massacre on the History Channel, but didn't get around to it as we had our own one in Dekalb.

Yesterday, I wore my NIU colors: hat, jacket, and sweatshirt. That was a nice idea out of Virginia Tech for college students across the country to weak Huskie red in honor of those slain. As alumni, both Liz and I did as well. I'll be wearing them for awhile.

My brother Bob called in the morning to talk about it. He wasn't paying much attention to the news yesterday morning when he heard the name Northern Illinois University and that caught his attention. My cousin Debbie had a daughter at Va Tech last spring and another one had just recently graduated from there.

We both agreed that there really isn't much you can do to stop a crazy person like that short of putting police by every classroom. Bob said that perhaps all instructors and administration should be trained and licensed to carry a gun and have one on them to prevent this from happening. He has a point in that these crazies wouldn't be so prone to go after people who can shoot back. As a former teacher, I sure would hate to see it come to that.

I went to see two new movies at the McHenry Theater and the woman running the place talked about it after seeing my "colors." She had a daughter who graduated from there.

After the movies, I drove over to Best Buy to get the Amy Winereis CD. The person at the check station at the front of the store wanted to know if I was from Northern. He said he was a student there and was not happy because he couldn't wear red. Best Buy's color is blue. Had he been working at the nearby Circuit City, he'd have been ok.

We talked for several minutes. He said he'd also been near Cole Hall a short time earlier. He was glad that classes will resume Tuesday. As he said, you can't just let something like that stop everything.