no reason to cry

right now I am reading "Love, Poverty, and War" by Christopher Hitchens, and it has been extremely interesting. So today I am sitting in the library reading the book in between classes and a something very strange happens. A girl a couple of tables to the left of me is checking her grades on the internet and she suddenly breaks down in tears. She is weeping and complaining about how she doesn't know what she is going to do next, and how she is soo angry! Next, she starts laughing hysterically and crying at the same time, which is something everyone should witness at least once if you haven't yet. when it happens you are confused, and half expect them to start strangling people or turn their head 360 degrees. It is strange. Anyways, while this is going on I am reading one of Hitchens essays about the Kurds and the horrible decimation and gassing of Halabjah in 1988, an incident in which Saddam massacred hundreds of thousands of Kurds without blinking an eye. at this moment it became evident to me just how lucky we as Americans are to be able to sit around in the comfort of middle America and cry about grades that our daddy is probably paying for. These Kurds would give almost anything to be in our position, and they would be extremely grateful to get any grades instead of bombs, and they wouldn't cry about either. This is also relative to the other devastations occurring right now in the world, such as the the tsunami, the Iraq war, and the crisis in Sudan (which bush doesn't seem to care about). of course, I realize every day how lucky that I really am as an American, I guess it just took the dichotomous relationship between the two situations for me to be reminded once again.