Where were you on 9/11 ?

This morning, on my drive to work, my favorite radio station personality - Trevor Doyle was asking us, "where were you the morning of 9/11"? His co-host stated that everybody would remember where they were that morning and I had a flashback to that day. I know where I was. The attacks of 9/11 changed so many lives, changed the way we travel, the way our borders function, the way we see people of different nationalities, the way we see life and how we are living ours.
The morning of 9/11, I was supervising the activities of a young offender. He was a grade 7 student, expelled from school for his violent behavior, and his lack of respect for authority. This child was trouble, a time bomb waiting to go off, he was heading for a future life of crime, or time in jail. That morning he locked me out of the house, attempted to intimidate me verbally, and employed every method he could think of to scare me, and make me quit like everyone else before me did.
A bit later, I was inside watching television with him, and he approached me from behind the couch I was sitting on. I could not take my eyes off the television, I could not believe what I was seeing.... a plane crashed into the world trade center, people were running, terrified, and my heart was just breaking for everyone who was trapped in those buildings. I heard the boy's voice behind me, he was laughing, he was entertained by what was on the television. I turned to look at him and told him to come sit with me, I looked into his unfeeling eyes and said, "that is real... not a show, those planes really hit those buildings, and people are really dying..." He laughed and said it was great.

As I sat there watching, nearly forgetting he was there in the house with me, I let my guard down. Then I saw it, the baseball bat swinging toward my head and stopping within two inches of my right temple. I did not flinch, partly because the scene on the television had my attention, but also because I was desensitized to violent behaviours in my childhood. He swung the bat again, and stopped it just above my ear, and I held my breath, and turned to look him in the eye....... he was smiling a sinister smile, his eyes left mine and looked at the television briefly and I pulled the bat from his hands. His expression changed and he said to me in his cocky teen voice, "how come that didn't scare you, it made the other girls scream and they quit, how come you didn't get scared?" I took a big breath in, exhaled to regain my composure and said to him, "nothing you can do will even come close to what my father did to me as a little girl, you can not scare me." He sat down on the couch and asked in a little boy's voice "what did he do to you"? I poured my heart out, telling him about the violence I grew up with, and how evil my father was. He softened, and whispered quietly, "my father did some really bad things to me too". We spent an hour talking, and when we were finished, he watched the newscast with me and sat quietly, obviously deep in thought.

Later that week he asked me to take him to talk to his school principal. After the meeting with the principal, he told me, he was going to try to go back to school. He had agreed to the stipulations the principal had laid out for him to follow in order to return to school. Nine months later, he won the turn around award at his school, had good grades, and was on the path to a promising future.

When asked what did it for him, what made him decide to put the effort in to change his life, he said it was the day he and I watched the events of 9/11, and the conversation we had together. Apparently something my grade four teacher, Mrs. Kusiak, had said to me, I had repeated to him, and hit home with him... he now knew that because you grew up in a violent home, does not mean you need to perpetuate that behaviour, that good can come out of bad, and we can all chose a path that is good. And despite the evil that is in the world, good can prevail. Good always wins. We can all be good and make a positive change in the world. Thank you Mrs. Kusiak


That leads me to think, did any good come out of 9/11? I guess that depends on your perspective, but in tiny little New Brunswick, in Canada, a young boys future may have been altered for the good because of the evil attacks on the world trade centers, otherwise I may not have been in the vulnerable position I was in when he swung that bat, and we may never have had that conversation. I believe that if one looks hard enough, you may find more stories of good coming out of the events of that day, at least I like to think so.

So, where were you on 9/11? How did it change your life? Or a life of someone you know?