Tonight I started watching OJ: Made in America on Netflix. It’s an absolutely fascinating series. I just finished episode three. I did not understand how much race played a part in OJ’s career and eventually trial. The series showed racial tensions and police brutality that were going on in LA while OJ was becoming a big star. It was a lot to think about. I really had no idea.

Where were you when the Rodney King video came out? I was in middle school in a white community in rural Ohio. I remember watching it, but not really understanding what was going on. It didn’t seem to affect me at the time. As far as I was concerned, Los Angeles was so far away and so different from where I grew up that it might as well have been another planet. I seemed so far removed from it.

But here I am thirty years later. While I was watching the series they showed the Rodney King video and I just lost it. I just started crying. I couldn’t hold it in. How could anyone justify that brutality? It hit me like a ton of bricks; it was far different from what I felt when I was younger.

I’m just going to chalk it up to getting out of my little rural community and having a little more life experience, but man, that was really hard to watch.

Have news stories ever hit you that way? Do you remember stories that happened when you were younger and they resonated with you differently when you were older? I feel like there’s so much I don’t understand. Do you ever feel that way?