Remembering- Get out of your boxes

There are a lot of things that I want to remember today.  One being the obvious, 10 years since the worst attack on our nation.  September 11.  Ten years ago, it just seemed like another day.  Ten years later, our lives are forever changed...and it's one we will never forget.

First things first.  For my own memory, I'd like to remember a recent illness that I'm battling.  With the pain associated it will be hard to forget, but nonetheless I'm going to document it.  Something you should know about me is that I have the unique ability to acquire illnesses and/or diseases that are reserved exclusively for eighty year old people.  No offense, Mimi, but it's true.  So Thursday, I realize that my lower jaw is very tender.  I thought I had slept wrong or something but after eating that area started swelling.  I called the Roomie and told her I had a tumor and to please come home so I would stop over-reacting.  I called several other people before I called the doctor...who couldn't see me that day...but told me it was a swollen lymph node.  Going back to my previous statement, that I can contract anything under the sun, I knew that this was not a swollen lymph node and something weird was going on.  I pushed through.  Advil wasn't touching the pain.  I went to sleep and was wide awake at 2 AM.  Throbbing pain...like out of control...could not get comfortable...took some Advil and waited to call the doctor.  Oh and at 2?  My.face.was.huge.  So the doctor squeezed me in.  She said it was an infected salivary gland.  Seriously, what the hell?  So I got on some pain meds and antibiotics and went to clinic.  Each time I ate my face got bigger.  I looked awesome and wanted to cut it out of my face.
I can't believe I'm doing this, but here...here it is.

Don't let that fool you.  No, that's not one of my 9 chins (inherited from father)...that's the swelling from this thing Friday night.  It was actually smaller there than earlier.  It's nearly invisible today.


So where were you?  It's one of those things I think about a lot of the time.  It really was one of those growing experiences.  I was sitting in first period in Algebra 1 in eighth grade.  I had a crazy, kind of larger than life teacher.  I remember he left the room, and then came running back in saying "You have to get out of your boxes".  He was very agitated and just kept moving all around.  We had no idea what he was talking about until he brought in a TV.  Katie Couric was saying the World Trade Center had been bombed.  I knew they were in New York but had no clue what the World Trade Center was.  I remember just watching, not really understanding what was going on.  Ingrid P. Warren (our principal) walked by and saw what was going on and made him turn off the TV.

Mr. Brown rambled on about getting out of our boxes.  I think he knew before any of us that this wasn't an accident.  We innocently went on with our day.  A friend came in at lunch time, because she had been to the dentist, and said the towers had been hit by planes.  We still had no clue the magnitude of these events.  That afternoon we had assembly so Ingrid P. Warren could break the news to us.  I remember being so confused but immediately so worried about my Uncle Tom.

I got home.  Turned on the TV.  I was just in shock.  During first period, the second plane hadn't hit the South Tower yet.  They weren't even sure what had happened in the North Tower.  The buildings hadn't collapsed.  The Pentagon hadn't been hit.  Flight 93 hadn't been run into the ground.  Everyone was throwing around this word "terrorism".  I was home alone and freaked out.  I called my cousin Malinda at work.  Even asked for Malinda Moore (her maiden name...and no one knew who in the heck that was).  I needed to know how Uncle Tom was.  Needed to understand what was going on.

I'm so glad I had amazing teachers that year.  Teachers who encouraged me to write...and write it all down.  I have pages and pages of even days following that seem so "real" because I'm able to go back and read it.  Stuff I know I would have forgotten.

It took several years to realize what it meant to "get out of my box".  But one day I just got it.  We were so trapped in our little worlds.  The world of Collierville, Tennesse- where who was going to ask you to the dance, who was being heinous to who, what would I wear to youth group, how much white eye liner was appropriate, or how short could I wear my shorts out before my parents said something- were my biggest problems.  It's still like that today.  We are still so stuck in our "boxes"- unwilling to accept people's differences, unaware of other people suffering, consumed in our own "problems", unobservant of the world around us...the list continues.  So do it.  Look around.

Get out of your boxes.


Never forget.