Anyone who has a two hundred-plus IQ runs the risk of just hanging out because you get too involved in your own thoughts and you just want to sit the… - Brandon Stanton

My dad died in 9/11. They opened up the museum to families today, so I went this morning. My plan was to go to work after, but I just couldn’t do it.”“What happened to him?”“He was a cop. He actually had the day off. But as soon as he heard, he drove into the city and got there just in time for the second tower to fall. A witness said that my dad had started to run when the tower fell, but turned back because a trapped woman was calling to him.”“What do you remember?”“I was in science class. And my teacher told us that there had been a plane crash. That’s all she said. Then I noticed all these kids around me getting phone calls and text messages, and they’d run out of class. So I knew something big was happening. Soon we got let out of school. On the ride home, I remember thinking that my dad was going to be working overtime on this. I imagined he’d be down there everyday, saving people. ‘I bet I won’t see him for weeks,’ I said.

I turned out okay because of the people in foster care who didn’t go anywhere when I tried to push them away.”

“Anyone in particular?”

“There were a lot. But there was a counselor at one of my group homes named Jenelle Bugue. And when I woke up crying at 3 A.M. because I felt nobody loved me, she would sit with me and tell me that she cared about me, and she wasn’t going anywhere.

Some places are only written about when something extreme happens: like a murder, or an explosion, or a war. Only then do the cameras come running, because conflict makes for a great story. Unfortunately this means that much of the works is only seen through the lens of conflict. And when these are the only stories we hear, the world seems like a pretty scary place.