11

Be bold.

It’s been my motto for a little while now. It’s all about being loud, proud and not letting anyone dilute your awesomeness.

Yesterday I was quietened.

I feel that the fact that I’ve posted this a little bit late kind of emphasises my silence? Anyway yesterday was September 11. It’s a date that’s been stamped onto our hearts and minds. It was a game changer. Al Qaeda become a house hold name, we started having to go through those metal detectors for domestic flights and the US charged into its most difficult war. A war against a faceless army.

I remember September 11. I was eight years old. At the time I had no idea about the magnitude of what I was seeing on ‘Breakfast’. To me it just looked like another boring news article; definitely not something that deserved to be cut out of the newspaper and taken to the news board at school to be pinned up next to the picture of the new tiger at the zoo. I think I first got a hint that it was kind of big when my teacher Mrs Sangato asked us all after roll time what big thing had just happened. I very eloquently explained that ‘some aeroplanes went into some buildings in the United States’ I may have thrown around some words like ‘terrorism’ and ‘attack’ without really knowing what they meant.

The moment I realised how big the attacks were was when I got home after school. Instead of the usual screening of ‘Digimon’ there was a special news bulletin of the aeroplanes again. I remember my sister telling me that I had to watch it. It was a game changing moment in history. I also remember my mother fighting with her and trying to censor me from the terrifying truth. There were people jumping out of the buildings. That’s the one bit that I remember distinctly from the broadcast. I don’t remember seeing the towers collapse I just remember the hysteria when everyone realised what those coloured things were.

It was one of those days that in years to come people will ask ‘where were you when the planes hit the twin towers?’

September the 11^th made me realise what a censored life I’d lived. The concept of mass murder was still a foreign thought in my childish mind. I think a lot of children lost their innocence that day. I remember talking to one boy at GYLC who lived in New Jersey. He’d seen the smoke from the twin towers. His best friend’s dad was killed. Those people who were directly affected will never forget that day.

But for the rest of us?

Eventually we’ll get older; our memories will fade until we wake up on one September the 11^th and merely think of it as another September day.

3 Good Things

*(Yesterday but I had leftovers today so it still counts) Angela picking me up from my hall out of the blue to take me home to her house for dinner which included steamed dumplings! Oh so very delicious! Thanking you!

*Being the early bird. I woke up early this morning and went for a run. V lucky that I did since almost as soon as I got back then the sky turned cloudy.

*MUAC meeting. Man NZ is beautiful!