I had a frustrating teaching session with my students (I just want them to do well, but they didn't do all of their homework) and now I'm stuck in traffic. In front of me is a car with a license plate that catches my eye:
"1/18/1990 Never Forget"
That is the day my dad died. I become incensed. What right does this person have to remind me of my dad's death? How dare they trivialize him by putting his memory on a fucking license plate! I get out of my car and run to the one in front of me, open the driver's door, pull out the middle-aged woman and her 6-year old son and pummel them until my anger runs dry.
I'm at home now, bored. I'm just checking out other blogs. I find one blog with a drastically different slant from my own, no big deal. Then I see images flashing of the very moment that my father died. I can't control my emotions and write the purveyor of the blog a curt email.
Later, I get an itch to find out what's going on in the world. I turn on the news only to hear politicians invoking "1/18," (my dad's death!) for their own political gain. Sometimes I agree with the politicians, sometimes I don't, but what right do they have to use my father's death for their selfish reasons? For the next election, I write-in Mickey Mouse for every office.
My dad's legacy has become his death. His life has been forgotten by those fiercely claiming to remember him the most. No one cares about him. They simply use his death to strike fear in the rest of the country in order to scare everyone into compliance. I've lost the memory of my father. I've lost the control to honor him. My dad died in vain.
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