I don’t know that I have ever told this story to anyone, other than my wife, but there are a handful of people around my age who may remember it well.

My entire being has been rife with emotion today. From the moment I witnessed the institutional murder of Alton Sterling, my lens of the day was dramatically altered. I waded through an endless stream of tweets and posts about bullshit that seems meaningless in the wake of yet another murder which is, really, a slow leak in the sea of American genocide.

I have been wanting to write this article for many days, but haven’t been able to properly formulate my thoughts. It’s emotionally and psychologically challenging as a fellow human being, but it’s concerning to me on a personal level as well. You see, I’m a white man with five children — and three of them are black.