Do you recall those moments in your life when your youthful naivety got pretty much blown out of the water? I'm not talking about the scandal centered around the existence of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy. I'm referring more to those things that went contrary to your belief system at the time and the things that made sense to you. It's those moments when common sense became neither common nor made sense.
I think for me the earliest such event was when I was seven living in Glen Burnie, MD. After school I happened upon a circle of kids standing around two boys fighting. Well, actually it was one boy beating the crap out of another. One of my friends was there watching and I walked up to him and asked why they were fighting. He said the bigger kid was beating up the other kid because he hit the bigger kid's little brother. I asked, "Why did he hit his little brother?" "Because he's black." That was a totally weird response so I said, "Yeah, I know he's black but why did he hit him? My friend turned and looked right at me and said, "Because he's BLACK." Wow, you talk about something just not registering. I was expecting an answer like he stole his lunch money or took his baseball or something. Hitting someone for how they looked made absolutely no sense to me.
Today marks the 40th anniversary of the Munich Massacre at the Summer Olympics. Like many of you that were around, I remember where I was when it was all happening. It also marked another moment in my life when my naive assumptions were crushed. I had assumed that right would always prevail. Watching the events play out on TV I thought how could anyone in a ski mask cause any harm? The police would take care of this in no time and everything would get back to normal. Unfortunately that wasn't the case.
How could a civilization like ours that managed to go to the moon let little things like hooded terrorists in Munich or pajama clad farmers in Vietnam cause so much destruction and violence? When they would show starving people on TV I would always think they're ok. I mean, if someone could get to where these starving people were and film them then they can certainly bring along food and what not to help them out. My belief was wherever man can go he can bring his wealth and generosity to those that need it. I had no idea that just because we discover a problem doesn't mean we'd actually do anything about it. I guess it's a right of passage, a part of growing up but wouldn't it be nice if things were actually the way we thought they should be when we were children?
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