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I just dropped off a Christmas poinsettia at a friend's house - she was getting home from the hospital today. Her husband died of cancer last week while she was laid up with back surgery. For her, I guess the words "Merry Christmas" will sound kind of hollow.
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Like most Americans, I just about O.D. on the news. No matter what it's about! It could be news about elections, some economic cliff, or eruptions in the Middle East. It's all important, but it's not exactly in the "joy to the world" category.
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"She let us down." That's what one ten-year-old said about Miley Cyrus' more-than-suggestive performance at the MTV Awards. And that little girl nailed it.
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Think about what you looked like in seventh grade. You say, "Oh, no! Please, I'd rather not." Are you thinking, "Man, what a hunk I was! What a Miss America!" Probably not.
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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.
