Domestic Geek

MAKING SENSE OF EVIL FOR A 5-YEAR-OLD

You know how you feel when you are having a nightmare?
GTA bureau chief Laurie Monsebraaten's 5-year-old son Gavin turned on the television to watch "Arthur" and "Magic School Bus" yesterday morning. Instead, he was met by the grave faces of TV news reporters describing the devastation in New York and Washington. "Mommy, a plane crashed into a building,'' he told his mother quietly. "Why did that plane crash into the building?''

Dear Gavin,

No matter what you hear, this is not the end of the world.
But this week, our world changed forever.
And many people are very upset, scared, sad and angry.
It's all very hard to explain. Nobody really knows how it happened, not even the president of the United States.
But this is our best guess.
On Tuesday morning, some very evil people pretending to be passengers barged into the cockpits of four airplanes and took over the controls.
They flew two of the planes into the two tallest buildings in New York City, sending them both crashing to the ground.
They flew another plane into a building in Washington called The Pentagon. That's the military headquarters for the entire United States.
They flew the last plane into a field near a place called Pittsburgh. We think that plane was also supposed to hit a building, but something stopped it.
Nothing like this has ever happened before anywhere in the world.
Everybody is in shock.
Many, many people were killed and hurt - mommies and daddies, aunts and uncles, sisters and brothers, and grown-up sons and daughters.
Maybe as many people as you sat with in the Skydome when you went to the baseball game with daddy last spring.
So many people were hurt and killed in such a short time. it's very hard for people to understand.
You know how you feel when you are having a nightmare? That's how most people are feeling today. except it's not a nightmare. it's real.
And that's why our world has changed.
Nobody wants something like this to happen again. but nobody knows how good people in the world are going to stop such evil. And that's why everyone is frightened.
The people who did this are called terrorists. That's because they do things that terrify us and don't care if they die while they hurt others.
Some of the people who did this died in the crashes, but others who helped them are still alive and could do something like this again.
The police and the military are trying to find out who they are and when they know, they will try to stop them.
In the meantime, there are hundreds of real-life rescue heroes just like on TV who are working around the clock to help people who are still alive and trapped in the rubble of the buildings that were attacked.
They are brave police officers, firefighters, paramedics, nurses and doctors, and they are doing their very best.
If they get tired, firefighters and ambulance crews from Toronto and many other places are ready to go and help.
We can help, too.
We can pray for those who were hurt and killed and for their families and friends. We can pray for the people who are risking their safety to find survivors and we can pray that the world finds a way to stop terrorists.
We can try to be a good person. To be kind. To think about other people.
Unfortunately, the most difficult question to answer is why this happened.
And mommy doesn't know.

Love, Mommy