The Small Is Beautiful Manifesto

11 September, 2007

9/11 Something Different

This morning, I was watching a popular morning show as I was eating my breakfast. There was live coverage of a memorial underway and my eldest son L, came to me and wanted to know who died. (He is very curios about death and what it means). I thought for a moment and then told him the following. "Before you were born, there were some very bad people, who made a very bad choice to hurt others. They wanted to kill a bunch of American's because they do not like them and are really bad people. They drove airplanes into buildings and blew them up. Everyone on the plane died and many people in the buildings couldn't get out and died".

He replied, "When I live in a big building, I will live on the bottom so I can get out fast". That was all, he got up and started to chase my little guy around the house.

I thought, did I tell him too much? Did I use the wrong words? He is 5, so how much terror do they need in their lives? Then I think back to a conversation I had with my NYC Gal Pal and realized that some 5 years old, have more terror than we know. The world is coming at us fast and how we explain the choices of others in relation to our children is a curious question.

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