this week i went for breakfast with my son. there were three tvs on the wall. one showed a generic gameshow, the middle was the president of the usa talking about iran, the third was another gameshow ("wipeout" with richard hammond).
people drank mimosas and chatted. i had eggs benedict. juice. the sound was off. canada is not at war, but there is a new war in the world. people were knocked into the mud by the padded machines.
a long, long time ago, i was in a pub in ireland with my dad. we had stopped for food: soup and a sandwich. it was july 8th 1994 and space shuttle columbia was being launched from kennedy space centre. it was televised.
my dad just couldn't believe that no one was watching it. we were going into space! sure, it wasn't even the first time in 1994, but, y'know. space! he remembered the whole world stopping for rocket launches, and for the first shuttle missions.
now people weren't looking up from their pints for it. i didn't understand how he felt. i grew up in a world where we always had spaceflight. i probably didn't think much about it, but i also probably assumed we always would. columbia crashed in 2003, killing seven astronauts.
maybe a bunch of folks have grown up in a world where we're always at some kind of war. i'm the odd one out for experiencing the gap between the 1st and 2nd gulf wars. i saw the end of the cold war and the start of the war on terror.
it feels like the president addressing the nation like this, even a president we don't much care for, is something to unmute the tv for. maybe i understand a little bit more about how my dad felt.