Having read newspapers and news magazines since about the age of 11, and having been a huge fan of historical and true-crime books of all sorts for decades past, and having read of too many atrocities and murders to even mention one without neglecting countless others, and having read and heard much too much about far too many of what really are machine gun massacres in America, I'd found myself too middle-aged news-weary jaded to be truly shocked or deeply upset by these things anymore; but on the morning of Friday, December 14, 2012, when I first saw the first web report of the Sandy Hook Elementary School Massacre (which is what it was) I sat here at my desk in front of my monitor and I honestly actually felt my body and my brain and my emotions react so differently from 'usual' – felt myself actually reacting physically as well as mentally and emotionally in a way I hadn't in years, if ever before – that after my initial shock at the news of the shooting turned in an instant to a feeling of being honestly heartbroken for the victims, especially for the 6 and 7 year-old children who had simply been sitting in their classrooms on another school day, some of them excited at the prospect of making gingerbread houses that day, all of them excited as only children can be during the holidays – and heartbroken as well for their families, and for the adults whom I have come to see as their protectors, and of course for their families as well – and even feeling heartbroken for the nation itself as I read about and watched what unfolded in the days afterward, feeling myself involved in a way that I have honestly never felt myself involved in a ‘news story’ before – I wanted very badly to do something meaningful, however small, perhaps, in order to honor and memorialize them, and to draw attention to the need for all of us to protect children everywhere in every way humanly possible, hoping as well that it might offer even just a thimbleful of peace and hope to their families as well as to their friends and neighbors in Newtown, and maybe even to the rest of us.

So I went online and I created both the iPetition asking President Obama and the US Congress to establish Protect the Children Day as well as a Facebook Page called Protect the Children Day (on which I will post photos and stories shared by the families so that we can all get to know the children and their protectors as best we can as we seek to honor them by creating and instituting Protect the Children Day) both of which I sincerely hope are indeed one small but meaningful way in which to honor and to memorialize the 20 children whose lives were cut much too short as well as the 6 adults whose lives were sacrificed in an attempt to protect them.

I ask that you join me in seeking to honor them all with a day specifically devoted to remembering them and their stories and to remind us all that we must protect the children every day in every way humanly possible.

Please sign the Petition @ link texthttp://www.ipetitions.com/petition/protect-the-children-day/ and spread the word as far and as wide as you can.

Thanks, kids.