Flags

I know I wrote about this last year, so I won't write a lot this time. Saturday was Ridgecrest's annual Parade of 1000 Flags, in honor of the anniversary of 9/11, otherwise unfortunately known as Patriots Day. I thought I'd take the twins again, since it is quite an amazing sight to see all those people carrying all those flags, especially in such a small town.

Rocket Boy didn't want to go, and I didn't blame him at all. But I did want to go, kind of. 9/11 is a day that I do want to remember, and watching Ridgecrest celebrate it reminds me of how problematic the whole thing was even at the time: nowadays everyone talks about how the country "came together" around 9/11, but it didn't, really, it divided up very quickly. I think only New York City itself really "came together." In Colorado, all the conservatives started plastering flags on their cars and screaming God Bless America.

I figured the twins were still young enough that the parade wouldn't warp them. Of course they thought it was going to be like the annual Christmas parade, with candy thrown at them, and were sorely disappointed when no candy appeared.

There was the problem of what to wear. If I had an Obama 2012 t-shirt, I would have worn that, but I don't, and anyway none of my t-shirts fit me -- I am not t-shirt shaped. I finally settled on my Death Valley t-shirt, despite the fact that it doesn't fit either. It seemed to celebrate America, but not quite the America that the other participants were celebrating, if that makes any sense.

The twins and I got to City Hall early enough to watch the parade approach. First came a whole lot of fire trucks and boos wanted to know why.

And then I realized that I needed to explain 9/11, but how to do that? Finally I said this: "Almost eleven years ago there was a very bad accident. Some bad men crashed some airplanes into some tall buildings, in New York City... which is a place in America... and a lot of people died, including lots of firemen. So today we're remembering how sad that was." (How'd I do? Too much scary detail? What would you have said?)

Boos were cranky and ran away from me repeatedly. I figured there was no point trying to stay for the singing of "God Bless America." And my new camera, which has a battery that you have to charge, reminded me that I hadn't charged it since I got it and so it was now going to shut itself off. So these are all the photos I have. Might as well stop here.

NOTE: Thought I'd come back and add something to the paragraph above about how to talk to little ones about 9/11. After I wrote that, I searched online for answers to the question and came up with some useful advice. In retrospect I wish I had left out the part about people and firemen dying. I wish I had said "...and a lot of firemen helped clean up all the mess." Or something similar. Other than that, I think I did OK. The online advice said basically to avoid showing your kids the scary photos/videos of the Twin Towers coming down, especially the people jumping out of windows to their deaths. Don't talk about how many people died. And don't talk about it a lot, whatever you do. Give a brief explanation and leave it at that. If they ask more questions, answer them, but as mildly as possible. Stress that it won't happen again. In my case, the twins barely listened to me and did not ask any more questions, so I plan not to bring it up again until next September. And maybe not even then. We'll see, play it by ear.