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Wishing for a boring childhood

Remember when we were in school and the morning of an exam we fantasised that some extra terrestrial monster would descend and exams would be cancelled? Nothing of the sort happened. We wrote our exam, went home and studied for the next and again wished for ET the next morning. And at the end of a bad exam we wondered why our wishes were never granted- boring lives we had no?! We went to school, played in the grounds, came home to eat our snack, did homework, watched "little wonder" on TV, fussed over the boring dinner and went to sleep.

On days that my parents had to be out late or were travelling, they'd inform a neighbour to keep an eye on the house. We ate out of a stocked fridge, watched TV and walked the dog before going to bed. Such boring lives no?!

The neighbour's car got robbed of the stereo at 2 in the night- my dog went to chase the robbers, but they had taken off. Now THAT made for a good showoff session at school the next morning, "You won't believe what happened last night....." with a good dose of imaginary details... Not so boring??

It's been a few years since then. I read about people being robbed, killed or meeting with fatal accidents. My heart went out to these people I didn't know but I went on with my life. I went to college, got myself a job, married, had a child and life went on. A few months ago it was the rape of a 6 year old child in the neighboring school that jolted me into a reality that until then seemed distant and at best somebody else's reality. It gave me sleepless nights, making me paranoid about everything and everyone. I took a cab home at 9 in the night last week and made sure I spent the entire journey on the phone with my husband, should the cab driver try something disgusting.

Yesterday they just walked into school and killed some 100 children. Those kids didn't come back to a boring afternoon of more studying. They won't have another bad exam day because these men with guns don't like their dad's boss's boss's boss. Call it religion or whatever else, my world isn't boring anymore. And I really wish it would go back to being just that- boring and normal, for the sake of my child and her friends.


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