Note: This piece is a personal opinion piece. It does not necessarily represent the opinions of the Staff and Management of The Inscriber.
“I said maybe, you’re gonna be the one that saves me, and after all, you’re my wonder wall.” –Oasis “Wonderwall”
When I saw the breaking news alerts on TV around 3:00 PM about what had happened at the Boston Marathon, my emotions were shock, horror, panic, and a sense of “Here we go again”. I stuck to the television for several hours before I had to go to work that night, but after I came home, I did something I never thought I would do again.
I stayed in my small room, staying awake until 3 AM when I heard the first reports of the new day, watching the first report of the day on ABC Television. Their “World News Now” team, usually sliding in the overnight news hours with puns, jokes and a light-hearted attitude, became very serious and professional with their treatment of the story of what happened in Boston.
The last time I did that was September 12th, 2001.
The impact on what happened April 15 in Boston will be felt for years to come. Anytime anyone even breathes the words “Boston Marathon” together, people will think about not the athletes who put their bodies to the limit running 26.2 miles on Boston’s Patriots Day, they will think of two explosions at the finish line, twelve seconds apart, that killed 3 people and injured 176. The bombs that were used in this incident contained shrapnel of various pieces, meaning that the reason those low-grade explosives were planted was to disrupt, harm and kill.
This year, there are no winners of the marathon.
But what I saw on TV was something wonderful. Race officials, emergency personnel, National Guard members and regular citizens banding together to help out. Those people are the real heroes. They were brave to go into the developing hell to wheel out those who were injured, runners and civilians. It was amazing to see how swiftly people came in to help. It was a comfort, and quite possibly the reason why the death toll was so low in this incident.
What I saw across the Facebook world and the “Twitter-verse” were quotes that honored the first responders. The most prevalent of these were words from Fred Rogers. They bear repeating more than the incident itself.
“When I was a boy, and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”
Maybe that’s the reason why I think we can make it through this incident. It’s words like that seem to come out of nowhere and help people who are hurting. But maybe another oft-repeated quote of Fred Rogers may help us all out and could possibly contribute to world peace.
“There’s no person in the world like you, and I like you just the way you are.”
If we say we hate a sports team, we don’t really hate the team, or the players. We hate the actions. Just remember that next time someone says, “Oh, I hate Pittsburgh because I hate the Steelers” or something to that effect.
And in closing, I encourage everyone to attend a sporting event of some kind, whether it’s little league or major league. Showing this terrorist or these terrorists that we will not let this stop us from enjoying ourselves will teach them that they will never win in this game.
Josh Widdowson is a writer and columnist for The Inscriber.