Unaware

I don't enjoy following the news.  It mostly consists of politics-- which usually gets my blood boiling, either because of what the opposing party is doing, or because of what my own party ISN'T doing-- and really awful things that people do to each other.  And natural disasters.  It doesn't tend to be very uplifting.

I grew up in a home where my Mom was (and still is) a total news junkie.  She subscribed to three or four newspapers (The Seattle Times, The Bainbridge Review, The Bremerton Sun, and my Dad usually brought home The Wallstreet Journal for her from work), a few weekly and monthly magazines (Newsweek, The Limbaugh Letter, the National Review, plus church magazines and probably a few others I've forgotten about), walked around with headphones in her ears (way before every teenager you've ever met did this) listening to talk radio, and she loved to watch TV shows with political debates while she ironed.  When I learned that her best friend didn't take a newspaper, I was shocked-- how did she know what was going on in the world?  But my Mom simply explained that Janine found it all too depressing and didn't like the clutter of a newspaper.

And now I find myself exactly like Janine.

Which is not to say that I don't know what's going on in the world.  I usually pick up on the big events just by being on facebook and reading my blogs.  But I certainly don't know all the details.  (And every time I see anything about Donald Trump, I'm glad I'm not paying much attention, because I find it all too ridiculous.)

But.

Occasionally something BIG happens and I completely miss it.

I know of at least two times when I totally missed out.

The first was when I had just gone off to BYU.  I was busy trying to figure out college life-- making friends in the dorms, using my Dining Plus card, finding all my classes, being afraid of the library...  And one of the things I hadn't figured out yet was that the newspaper printed by the University journalism classes was free.  Too bad, huh?  It led to me having the following conversation with my Mom:

Me: How's Tracy doing in London?

Mom:  Great!  And from where the London center is, she can see all the flowers, so that's been kind of cool!

Me:  Oh, good.  Um.  What flowers?

Mom: The flowers for Princess Di.  They have them all lined up against this wall and she can see them from where she's living.

Me: Oh.  And why are there all these flowers for Di?  What happened to Princess Di?

Mom:  Um, she died...?

Me: WHAT???  WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN???


Oops.

The other thing I missed out was even more tragic (in my opinion): the Amish schoolhouse shooting.  I heard references to it a few times (like at General Conference), but never really knew much about it and sort of wondered how I'd missed the whole thing.  Recently, I picked up a book from the library about it, One Light Still Shines, and figured out why I didn't hear about it: It happened within a week of Bentley being born!

If there's one time when you are completely unaware of what's going on in the outside world, it's that first week home from the hospital with your brand new baby and you're in the throes of cracked nipples, poopy diapers, and not sleeping.  No wonder I didn't know about it.

So those are my stories.  When people have those "I remember exactly what I was doing when Kennedy got shot" moments, I don't have them at all.  I'm more like, "Eventually I heard about that..."

Let me know who the next president is, will you?