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31 July 2010

A Discussion Between Children

I've been pretty wrapped up in work stuff and writing biology papers lately...so I was oddly unaware of something upsetting that happened in my community.

Yesterday, after work, I headed over to the house of some friends (who I more quickly would label as family) to have our family night (like I said).  We have family night every Tuesday.  But with Annette and McKenna in Elkhart Civic Theatre's upcoming production of Meet Me in St. Louis, we hung out on Friday this week instead of Tuesday, due to their rehearsal schedule.  And of course...what does one do on the Friday of the Elkhart County 4-H Fair?  Well, one goes to the rodeo!  What else?  So we went to the rodeo!

I always love a rodeo (which may seem funny to the people in Indianapolis, but I was a farm girl before I was an actress) and I always love being with them, so it was a win win situation.  It was a great time.  Aside from me getting a massive headache, everything was pert near fantastic, if you will.

My headache got to be a little too much to handle, and it was getting late anyway, so in between the barrel racing and the calf roping, we left to go home...or we tried.  We had the hardest time finding the van in the parking lots.  We finally did and got in to go home.

Somewhere in the conversation in the car, a word like "terrible" or something like that came up.  I don't know what it was for sure.  But Annette said, "Speaking of [terrible], Aidan I was so sorry to hear about the tower at Ox Bow."  (It wasn't one of her smoothest segues, but it was a lovely segue, nonetheless.)  Until that point I'd not heard what had happened.  But the observation tower at Ox Bow park was just burned to the ground by vandals.  It's a big deal here.  Everybody knows about the tower.  Everybody's seen the tower.  Everybody's at least climbed the four story tower at least one time in their life.  And now it's gone.

Elkhart Truth Article

After we were all silent for a while, no doubt remembering our times at the tower (at least I was), Aidan and McKenna started talking.

Kenna:  I just don't get it.  Why would anybody do that?  It's not like they're getting any money out of it...and that's what people are so crazy for sometimes right?
Aidan:  Sometimes...people just do things to hurt other people.
Kenna:  Well, I don't get it.

The car was silent.  I could sense that McKenna was waiting for an answer.  Aidan was quiet, not having an answer in his arsenal of knowledge (this boy knows so much about so much...it's so lovely).   But he didn't have an answer to this one.  So maybe it was an adult question/answer.

Neither Annette, nor Jeff, nor myself had an answer though.  At least I know that I didn't, and nobody else offered one up.

The only response was a shared sense of non-comprehension.

Why do people do things just to hurt other people?


I don't have an answer to that.  I don't understand the whole concept.  And even if I had the chance to understand it...I don't think that I'd want to.

Click here to join a group on Facebook to show your support for the rebuilding of the tower.

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