vs. Illinois. The Bruins lost to Okie State last week in a game they could have won had they held onto the ball. Well, maybe they would have won. It's impossible to know what would have happened, but they did have two crucial turnovers in the red-zone--that's the area within the 20-yard line... Illinois is not as good as OSU but they have an experienced offensive line and if last weeks game is any indicaiton, the Bruins will again have their butts handed to them. This is what happens when you recruit poorly and end up having the entire starting defensive line graduate at the same time.
But today, more importantly, is the third anniversary of the day that changed our lives. Virtually everything we do today is affected by the events of 9/11. It takes longer to get on a plane now. There are fewer public trash cans. We are more suspicious of strange packages and different people. And it is sad...
Anyway, there is little I can add to the conversation. Almost everything worth saying has already been said by better people than me. So allow me to play a re-run. Below is a slightly editted version of an entry from last year...
Remembering
T |
hree years ago on this day, many people died at the hands of a group of desperate people--people who shared similar traits to the suicide kamikaze of WWII. I don't mean to "revise" the image of kamikaze as a group of people desperately battling the cultural encroachment by and hegemony of the West; nor do I intend to equate the attacks of kamikaze pilots on military targets with terrorists on non-military ones. But I do believe that desperate people resort to extreme measures to accomplish their goals. It is frightening and more than a little sad...
On a lighter note on this solemn day, I would like to tell you that there seems to be an affinity between disasters and me sitting on the can. As I mentioned earlier this week (last year), I was sitting down, doing my business when the '89 SF earthquake hit, and fearing my body would be discovered under undignified circumstances. Well, two years ago on 9/11, I was again reading the newspaper in my favorite place when Musubi-chan pounded on the door to hand me the telephone receiver--damn, these cordless phones! It was my sister and she was screaming at me.
"Oh my God. It's horrible!"
"Huh? Calm down, what's up?" I said, half jokingly.
"Haven't you heard? You're ALWAYS on the toilet. A plane crashed into the World Trade Center."
I was frozen in horror because my sister worked right across the street from the WTC. But I immediately calmed down as I remembered that she just happend to be in LA taking care of our ill mother.
"God, Onigiriman." (No, she doesn't really call me this.) "There was a crash at the Pentagon, too. Didn't you hear? Isn't your school near the Pentagon? Do you LIVE in the bathroom?!?"
"..........."
I don't mean to make light of today's significance. But this is pretty much how it unfolded for me that day. It is now a standing joke in our house that I spend far too much time in my special room, and whenever I'm there, there's always the possibility of a disaster. M yaps about my time there, and my sister always tells me she's glad we have extra bathrooms. Whenever they start talking like this, I grab the most recent issue of SI or Newsweek and head to the... uh, you-know-where.
I have always been aware of my looks. In my early years, I was often told that I was cute and adorable by the adults around me--my students may stop laughing now... In first grade, I remember once being chased by the girls. Of course, they were probably just trying to beat me up. However, in my formative years--oh, I guess from 4th to 9th grade--I had developed a complex. After a few well-timed comments by some of the "cool" kids in class, I was forever exiled into the dreaded margins of society, the one reserved for dorks. After being told how poorly I played basketball--Man, you suck. Why do you have to be on our team.--or how ugly I dressed, I was absolutely convinced that I was one of the dorkiest kids ever born. 
My sister laughs, of course. Not because she thinks that it's wierd, for as much as I miss my mother, she misses her more. But she laughs because she would remind me of how often I had forgotten to send mom something, or even call her on her birthday. As a son, I pretty much sucked. This more or less exposes how much of a spoiled kid I was in many ways. These thoughts remind me of another sad expression: 孝行をしたい時分に親はなし、さればとて石に布団も着せられず (When one wants to be filial, the parents are gone. And of course, one cannot cover the grave stone with a blanket). This suggests that trying to keep your parent warm by covering her grave with a blanket is not an expression of filial piety, that it is too late to show your love with such a meaningless action.
I didn't give much thought to her words back then, but it lingers in my consciousness, dogging me almost daily. As for the movie "Tokyo Story", I can no longer watch it, as it is the last movie I ever saw together with my mother... 
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