The

The I grew up in a place

I grew up in a place called Bart Township in rural Pennsylvania.

Now, Bart is about as rural as it gets, especially around nickel mines where I grew up,

which is home to a bunch of old order Amish.

And if you're thinking of the Amish who practice Roomspringer or use flip phones because

they're quote-unquote essential technology, this is not the old order. They're so hardcore they

still refer to anyone who isn't Amish as English, and that was my childhood, living like we were

aliens in our own country. But I didn't know any better, so I was happy,

right up until October 2nd of 2006. Now, like most kids my age, I dropped out of school after eighth

grade to help my dad on the farm. And so that morning, we were working together while my little

brother was at school. Everything was going as

normal, just another day on the farm when all of a sudden my dad says, is it your brother? I looked up to

see this little speck in the distance, running down the tracks towards our farmhouse, and I knew it was

him. Dad then says, what the hell is he doing out of school? Because it was only 11 in the

morning. And then I followed him as he marched off towards the house to find out what was going on.

We got to the house to find my little brother in tears and my mom comforting him. Dad still thought

that he'd just run away from school, so he was so kind of angry or sort of getting

ready to be angry. But when my little brother finally got his words out and told us why he'd run

home from school, I remember it was almost like time stood still for a few seconds. He told us

there was a man, in our classroom, and he had a gun.

If you can believe it, this wasn't even the scariest part.

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