What Some People Will Never Understand

You may remember that last time I tried to explain that Brats understand the need to be vigilant in our daily lives. We are raised knowing that the world, while a happy place, is full of dark things and people who don't wish us well. Almost every brat you meet has at least one story of encountering terrorists in someway.
Today we saw evidence of terrorism in its most brutal form when Taliban gunmen stormed a Pakistan school and killed 145 people, mostly children. They created a diversion, distracted the security guards, scaled the walls to the school and killed 132 children and 9 adults. Those children were Brats. And as sobering as it is to think that their lives were cut short in this brutal way, it is also sobering to think that this is a reality of life for Brats everywhere. Because evil doesn't care if you are 12 and struggling with Algebra or 29, giving humanitarian aid or 25 and a trained soldier. Evil doesn't care that you are 10 and haven't got a clue about politics or religious ideology. Evil wants to be heard, it wants to send a message to your government and the world at large and if it takes you, well you are just so much collateral damage.

Some people may want to believe that before 9/11 terrorism didn't really touch American soil. They would have you believe that terrorism belonged to the Middle East or some other foreign country. A Brat can tell you that is far from the truth. Every Brat has a story about a bomb threat made to a military installation where they lived or an actual bombing that happened while they were with their parents overseas. We know that our personal papers, ID cards and other documents must be kept safe and that their loss is cause for distress, not just because we are without identification but because if those documents fall into the wrong hands, the consequences could be dire.

There are people who want us to believe that this knowledge is psychologically damaging to children. That children somehow need to think they live in some kind of utopia where good and bad are divided by a bright light and shades of gray don't exist. I think that most Brats would differ with that opinion. Certainly children don't need to be bombarded with gruesome images of people maimed by terrorist attacks. But they do need to know that the undertow of evil is out there and that their parents and the parents of their friends have the duty to stand between the rest of us and evil. Between them and evil. Knowing that the strength of their parents and other members of the military stand between them and evil allows them to go about their lives, going to school, playing with friends and getting about the business of growing up.

Until evil breeches the wall. Even though we know that it shouldn't ever happen. Each of us knows that it could happen.