Sorry about the lack of funny on this one; that’s assuming of course that you’ve found all my past posts as funny. Anyway, I wanted to post a quick note about hatred and the many faces it can take.
Yesterday, I was walking my daughter to a playdate in a local park and I saw something that reminded me of a memory that’s never left me.
I was ten years old and taking my first trip abroad. My dad and I went to England, Ireland and Scotland. At the time N. Ireland was still not particularly safe, but my dad wanted to do a drive through (this is the same guy who thought it was a good idea to travel to India and Nepal a few months after 9/11).
Well, the memory is us driving passed a movie theater where forty or so teenagers were milling around and waiting to go inside. Fairly normal scene except for the two cop cars paired with a few cops with guns standing around. The teenagers were ignoring them, joking and flirting as any teenager would, the cops just a part of their lives. We learned, when we were stopped and checked by one of the cops, that there had been a bomb threat on the movie theater. My father and I were speechless. We thought to ourselves (rightly or wrongly) that these kids were so desensitized that they were just hanging around the bomb threat site, waiting till they got the go ahead to go inside and see their movie. I counted my blessings that I had a safe home to return to.
Back to 2009, I’m 33 and a mother of an extremely smart/cute 18 month old. Flipping the t.v. station, I catch a sound bite; there has been a bomb threat on a local temple. I waited almost an hour to figure out what was going on thanks to the stupid sensationalist media dragging me along with such tasteful cliffhangers as, “We’ll be back after this break to learn more about this NAIL BITER.” Nail Biter? Really? You guys do realize that your not reporting an the next episode of 24, right? You’re reporting on real life that effects real people. I’m not watching because I love your witty repartee, I’m watching so I can know whether I should go get my sleeping baby and evacuate, since the temple in question is around the block from our apartment!
Anyway, focus Clea, the four men were caught, their hatred foiled this time, but there is always an aftereffect, right? Now, I have a new memory, ten or so toddlers running in a playground in front of a Hebrew day care, ignoring the cop car stationed out front. Its just a part of their lives.
