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Rwanda - It was the centerpiece of a lot of news attention back in 1994. Bloody civil war; tens of thousands of Rwandans were slaughtered there. There were nightly images of emaciated refugees, dying of disease, dying of starvation. And children; oh, you just couldn't forget the children. Many of those kids had lost everything in the carnage.
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We had a few days off, and the phone rang in our little cabin in the woods. A family member was calling. She said, "You need to turn on the news. A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center." I watched the news for much of the next three days. I was trying to absorb a scene I had no mental file folder for. I don't think any of us did. I felt sickened, I felt vulnerable and profoundly sad beyond words.
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The first time my dad shamed me into riding a roller coaster, honestly, I couldn't wait to get off. Roller coasters aren't always fun.
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It was quite a few years ago when I heard about this young man on Long Island who took his sister for a ride in the family car. You say, "Oh, big deal." Well, it's no big deal except that the boy was five years old. Yes, it's true! His mother was sick in bed and his little sister said, "I want to go to New York City." So he crawled up on top of the refrigerator, got his mother's car keys out of her purse, took his sister out, belted her in, put on his seat belt, turned on the car, managed to get it in reverse, and backed it out of their narrow driveway onto their street. He drove up to a stop sign, then he turned left onto a major thoroughfare, and made it successfully to two traffic lights and stopped. Then he moved forward when he was supposed to.
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"We have a little boy here!" That was the announcement we heard when we were down on the boardwalk at the New Jersey shore. We'd been biking along the boardwalk, and it was a great sunny day; thousands of people were milling around the boardwalk. Then came that announcement over the sound system; you could hear it all down the boardwalk. "We have a little boy here who seems to be lost. He's about five years old. He's wearing red shorts and holding a little red truck." All of a sudden my bike ride wasn't as cheerful as it had been. I began to wonder why they didn't at least give out his name. I found out later it was because he was crying so hard he couldn't give it!
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I've been to South Africa several times. I love those accents, but not when they're talking about an inspirational sports icon killing his girlfriend. There's been a lot of fog around exactly what happened, but what we do know is that South Africa's Olympic hero admittedly shot his girlfriend four times. Now, he says accidentally and the police say on purpose.
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We kept two special remembrances of our wedding. One was a piece of wedding cake that we froze; the other was a recording of the ceremony. The recording was a much better idea than the cake. We ate the cake on our first wedding anniversary. You've heard of chocolate cake; this was more like chalk cake. Uh-huh, bad idea. But oh, the recording, now that was a great idea. In fact, often on our wedding anniversary we have replayed it. We relive that wonderful day that our marriage began. I know some couples go beyond that. They actually dust off the old wedding dress and reconvene what's left of the wedding party, and do it again on some milestone anniversary. Hey, it's good for a couple to remember that wedding day. It's good to remember where it all began isn't it? In any important relationship a trip back to the beginning can rekindle the spark.
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You gotta feel bad for the youngest child. I mean, there's a thousand pictures of the firstborn, "Hey, we've never had one of these before!" Maybe 300 or 400 of the second born. And then, if they're lucky, possibly 30 of the final arrival. Oh, we loved him just as much. We just didn't have as many pictures of him. Probably because his brother and sister wore us out.
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It might actually be an unwritten rule of flying commercially. The person who has the window seat in a row always seems to get there last. It's just got to be a rule; seems to always happen. It happened one day to me. I was lucky enough to be in the center seat. There was someone to my left sitting on the aisle seat, and we were all buckled in because they were about to close the door and begin the flight. I said, "All right! I'm going to get an empty seat next to me." No!
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My wife, my son and I were walking across a parking lot talking. All of a sudden the people who were walking in front of us whirled around and the lady said, "I know that voice!" Well, I'm always afraid when somebody says that to me; I wonder if it's like somebody I like, you know, I owe money to. But this does happen every once in a while, and sometimes it's someone I do owe money to, but more often than not it's someone who somehow has come into contact with this particular voice over the radio, and usually on a lot of occasions.
