Senior year in high school, eight in the morning, Pacific time. I was seven weeks from turning seventeen, full of teen angst, crappy acne, and excess blubber from bad eating habits. I took my seat in Creative Writing–the first class of my Fall 2001 semester. Instead of my teacher getting ready with our classwork, he turned on the TV to watch what looked like news. But what I and everyone else in that classroom saw on TV that very moment was more than just news. We were watching a disaster in Ne...