A very dark night in Aurora, Colorado

I am at a loss for words, but for some reason feel like I need to be typing. I’m shocked, saddened, angered, and so very much more as I awake this morning. On what should be a day of joy for so many people like me, we are faced with tragedy. Senseless trageday.

My eyes are week this morning. Clouded from a night without sleep, from a final collapse of exhaustion, as my body deals with the affects of large doses of caffeine.

Last night was a culmination of something years in the making. I love the Batman. From early childhood to this salt and pepper edition of my mid 30′s I have always enjoyed the billionaire orphan who put the needs of a city on his shoulders. We all need heroes and my generation was in the ideal age to idolize as the world finally received a quality depiction of Bruce Wayne. That and a growing acceptance of comicbook mythology into the mainstream has allowed Batman a standing position on hallowed ground.

Sure, the box office was shattered by the success of The Avengers, but you can’t honestly believe that those characters have portions of our hearts locked down like the Caped Crusader.

I digress.

What Chrisopher Nolan has done with his run at the helm of Gotham’s finest is breathtaking. There is a reality to it. Your left with a belief that with will power, money, and a tremendous research & development team that the Batman could save us from the depraved and insane.

I turns out we need that badly.

As I spent last night engaged in a wonderland of fun with friends and family watching the midnight release of 3rd and final installment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman, The Dark Knight Rises, others throughout the country were doing the same. Sitting in a movie theater with hundreds of people in a similar mindset as myself is exhilerating. You feel the oohs, the ahhs, and the excitement of the action. In this movie we saw emotion, we saw our “hero” in a way we’ve never seen him.

In the end we all applauded in unison. Others were not so lucky.

As I rolled out of bed this morning I called my wife to excitedly tell her how much I enjoyed it. I called to make sure she stayed far away from anything or anyone who could reveal some of the fantastic secrets this movie has to offer. Little did I know that she had news for me.

By now, I’m sure everyone is aware of the sensless killings in Colorado at a midnight showing of the same movie. We do not have a reason yet as to why it happened and regardless, is there a reason where it would make sense? I can’t see a logic where children sharing a moment where their parents where letting their inner child out to play should be massacred.

These people should’ve spent the morning fighting back the sleep, bragging to their friends that they know all the secrets to the story, and complaining about the lack of sleep.

Instead 12 are dead, 38 injured, even more traumitized, and a nation engulfed in sympathy.

These people did exactly what we did last night. Their worries were our worries. Were they gonna make us slide down in our row to make more room? How can we fill 2 hours of wait time? Are the bathroom lines short enough to go yet? Was that extra shot of esspresso enough? Or too much?

At no point last night did I fear for my life. At no point did I wonder if a gunman was going to enter the room and begin firing into the audience. Today I intend to take my children to see the movie and if I said the incident wouldn’t cross my mind I’d be lying.

This was a tragedy. Lives were lost, families were destroyed, and as it seems to be happening more and more, innocence was stolen.

I’m joyed that the police have their suspect in custody. I pray that if anyone else was involved that they too are brought to justice. It doesn’t make anything better…however, after the victims experienced so much they didn’t deserve, it’s only right that the shooter gets everything that he does.

“Why do we fall Bruce? To learn how to pick ourselves up again.” – Thomas Wayne, Batman’s father