I was alive for Y2k, and I was in class during 9/11.
I survived the brunt of Hurricane Ivan, and I corresponded with people from Louisiana during Katrina.
I watched the world shake, and I felt entirely helpless.
Some of the things that I have been through, many people can not even fathom.

My mother watched a tornado rip the protective boarding from our windows. My friends lost their homes. I never heard from them again. FEMA ran out of money two years after, and people still had no homes.

My grandmother told me about the people in New Orleans. Everybody was dying, and there was nothing that we could do. We couldn't afford anything. Nothing was going right.

Now I'm here. I listened to the story of the mine explosion. Four men died because they were underneath soot the first time the search and rescue crew went through. They didn't make it into a chamber, and they never were saved.

The news told me that a BP oil rig exploded. That could have been my brother the next day. Eleven men died. Coast Guards had to stop searching. Every disaster has a time limit. No matter how serious, once time passes it doesn't matter anymore. It makes me wonder about what would happen if I were ever in a horrible situation. Would I live, or would my time run out?