Michelle's Madness

Yesterday was 9/11, and I usually try to avoid all the news coverage of the anniversary. So I didn’t intend to watch any 9/11 stuff yesterday, but Brian stopped on the History Channel briefly and we both got sucked in. We watched the show “102 Minutes That Changed America” (I think that’s what it was called – I know it was 102 minutes). It was 102 minutes of continuous video footage and recordings from multiple video cameras around the area (the news and various people in different parts of the city looking out their windows, or in NJ looking across the water, and even from on the ground by the WTC). Also included were recordings from police band radios and walkies. It was still so surreal to watch, maybe even more so now because the footage they always showed on the news was just from the news helicopters, which were required to stay 5 miles away. Nothing like this, with all of the video from on the ground, showing the huge cloud of ash and debris that shot between all the buildings, and people just covered from head to toe in grey ash.

So Jacob started watching with us for about the last 45-50 minutes, and he had nothing but questions the whole time. “How did this happen?”, “Why did this happen?”, “Why don’t the terrorists like America?”. We figured that he can’t avoid seeing and hearing about it at this time of year that it was okay for him to watch so we could talk to him about it. He kept saying, “When is the other building going to fall?” like it was a movie, and we kept telling him it’s not a movie, that this is real. He was having difficulty wrapping his mind around this happening in real life, and why it happened, and I can certainly understand. It’s tough to wrap my mind around it too. He asked some very good questions though, and in his mind he processed the “why” to be “…because we have all the cool stuff.” Not a bad interpretation of such a horrible event by a 6 year old who was still in the womb when the event took place.

When I was helping him get ready for bed, he was still asking questions and he asked, “How do you become a good person?” So we had a discussion about that. He’s got a pretty good head on his shoulders already, not bad for a 6 year old. We talked about how good people care about other people and help other people and do good things (I used the fact that I gave blood the day before and how much he helps his brother as examples). He seemed good with that.

I can only imagine what he’s telling his classmates about the tv show he watched last night…