Re: A memory, and a request...

At about this point 13 years ago, I was prying my daughter away from Pokemon on TV to eat her breakfast and get dressed for kindergarten. Froot Loops and orange slices, IIRC.

From there, a 20-minute drive to work and a morning split between the usual stuff: rehash a pretty lackluster win over Wofford and discuss the upcoming win over Duke.

I'm still trying to remember who had the first posting, a little before 9 a.m., of a plane crash into a skyscraper in New York City. But within minutes, how we did against Wofford seemed not to matter much.

Sept. 11, 2001 was, in a way, the finest moment of Tigernet. The snark and sarcasm that's part of a balanced breakfast here was set aside in a shared community of sorrow and anger. There were no pumpers, no dumpers, just a family trying to make sense of the senseless.

And that day is one of the reasons many of us stick around. Despite the proliferation of other Web sites and networks, this remains one of the great communities in college sports.

It saddens me that so many people who were part of that day 13 years ago have left as internecine sniping and the weary drumbeat of flogging dead horses overcomes them.

Or perhaps, unlike me, they have real lives.

But if you were here on that day, take a minute and reflect on those events and what this place meant to you. And if you're among those who view Tigernet as the Devil's Playground, I'd ask that you see what some of us Silverbacks still see.

Tigernet is family. And family is what you make it.

If you use your family as a collective roll of Internet toilet paper, you get what you give. If you want to use it to mask your own insecurities with a spewing steam of belittling of others, you get dysfunction.

I can't change how you live your life on the Web. I'm way too old to try. But I can tell you that 13 years ago today, this place was an anchor for many shaking souls.

It truly deserves a bit more respect than it seems to enjoy today.

RevDodd

All-In [49613]

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Posts: 30357

Joined: 12/10/98

That got me thinking...

Sep 11, 2014, 10:10 AM

about the column I wrote the next day:

After all these years, the hurt is the same

The scene played itself out in countless homes across America.

“Mommy? Where’s daddy?”
“He’s in the other room, watching TV.”
“Is a ball game on?”
“No, honey. He’s watching the news.”
“Oh... how come he’s watching the news in there, not out here?”
“Well, there are things going on in the world that he wants to watch that he doesn’t want you to worry about.”
“Like what?”

With that question, asked a thousand different ways by a million different kids, a whole generation learned something their parents already knew -- the innocence around us is a fragile shell, a thin membrane of hope, bravado and the vain hope that bad things will always happen someplace else.

“Like mean people.”
“What kind of mean people?”
“Mean people who want to take something away.”
“Ohhh, like bank robbers.”
“Sort of like that, but worse...they want to take away our way of life. They think that if they can scare us enough, we’ll give in and do whatever they say. So they threaten people in big cities like Washington to make our government give up.”
“You mean like bullies. We have a kid at our school who pushes some kids around.”
“Sort of. They hide far away in another country and threaten us.”
“Will they take our freedom, Mommy?”

“I don’t think so. Remember the war your daddy fought in? That was the last time someone tried to take away our freedom. A lot of people fought very long and very hard so we could be free. I don’t think they want to give it up again.
"But your daddy doesn’t want you to worry about it, at least not yet. Your daddy and I love you and won’t let anything happen to you. Try not to be scared.”

“I’ll try, Mommy.”
“And when he comes out here, give him the biggest hug you can.”
“OK.”

“And when you say your prayers tonight, say one for all the people in charge of our country that they’ll do the right thing.”
“Should I pray for the bullies, too?”
“Yes. Pray for them that they’ll stop.”

That’s what I remember about the Cuban Missile Crisis, nearly 40 years ago -- a brief conversation with my mom in the early October darkness of our small home.

Nearly everything else in that part of my life has long since evaporated, or covered with memories of later TV shows, football games and scattered snippets of life. But that evening’s memories remain, black and white and sort of scratchy like the TV news shows of the time.

A few minutes later, Daddy wandered into the room, on his way to the kitchen for some buttermilk and corn bread -- to settle his stomach, I learned years later. Even in the dim living room lights, he looked tired, drawn... perhaps wondering if everything he had worked and fought for was about to be lost.

I did as my mom suggested. I hopped off the sofa -- the same sofa I cowered behind when the Wicked Witch appeared during “The Wizard of Oz” -- and grabbed him around the waist and squeezed him like he was all that kept me from falling into some dark void opening in front of me.
Daddy put his hand on the top of my crew-cut head and rubbed it softly. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’ll be all right.”

Half a lifetime later, after watching the latest news on the attacks on New York and Washington in the back room, I wandered back into the kitchen of my family’s home.
There’s no buttermilk and corn bread in the refrigerator. But there’s a little girl who dashed across the vinyl, skidding on her sock feet like a car bouncing off the No. 4 turn at Darlington. She lashed herself around my waist.

There are no secrets safe in this information age. Already she knows about the planes, the buildings, the dead. She knows about the fear that someone is trying to take away our way of life.

I reach down and rub the top of her head softly, left to right, left to right.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “It’ll be all right.”

And I silently pray to God that it will be.

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A memory, and a request...

,,***

I have to respond

As the news was breaking...

Great post rev.***

Eloquent! Though a member only the past three years and

It was a Tuesday...

I was in TAC (as usual) and I remember YOU posting about

I did report the second plane ...

I was in a classroom teaching American History

I remember that day well

Happy Birthday to your wife....