I heard them yelling again, stabbing each other with jagged words and complaints. I saw them wither under the cold accusations of unfulfilled expectations and spring back into the fight bleeding but not giving up as their boiling blood gave steam to energize their arguments. Their disappointments boiling in their veins making them seethe with fury, they gathered their pent up not-in-front-of-the-children words and tossed their grenades of anger at each other, hoping for the other to crumble under their wrath. They did not pay attention to the unprotected civilians that were their children. This was war and no one could be safe. So covering my ears, I dashed to my room. I jumped over the coffee table and knocked over a glass but kept on running. A moment of hesitation in the middle of such an altercation only meant pain, suffering, and picking sides. I would not be brought into this. Safe in the bomb shelter that was my room, I took cover and waited for the storm blow over. There is nothing a second grader can do against the forces of Mother Nature, against the fury of parents. But even with the door sealed shut, a pillow wrapped around my head with the intention of protecting me and blocking the harsh words, I could hear the hysterical screaming, the slammed doors, crashing pots and pans. So I hid deeper into the confines of my covers and found the scratched up no-longer-really-blue iPod under a sweater left behind (abandoned) on the bed during a warm evening. I slammed the ear buds into my ears and cranked up the music all the way until I thought my ears would surely bleed, and sat there in my princess sheet tent for hours. My head could be described only as numb and blank, yet somehow swollen with emotion, it throbbed. My eyes, no longer really seeing through the veil of tears shed out of panic, searched for a tissue not already soaked with mucus, but found none. I woke up a couple hours later, drained, my mother asking me if I felt all right. What else could I answer but fine?