My Top Three News Experiences

I had to think about this some, but it's definitely a good question. I'll give it my best shot.

In the early morning a few years back (Actually, it was quite a few years back. I must have been in elementary school at the time.) I was totally asleep when something shook the house that woke up my two brothers along with my mom and step dad. I was the only one that it didn't wake. There was very few things that would've woken me up during that time. But my step dad Bob woke me up by shouting, "wake up Kenny, there's a fire." Of course the word 'fire' would wake anyone up. It scared the crap out of me at first not knowing if it was our own house that was a blaze. I threw on some clothes, ran upstairs and took a look out our living room window. I saw flames shooting over the trees directly across the street. It turned out that a gas pipeline that ran along the road on the very next block had exploded. A fireman or police officer kicked us out of our home for safety reasons not long before Bob had scared me half to death. I think a mother and one of her kids had died that day because they went out their front door instead of out the back door where the father and their other kid had went and lived. Sad.

After finishing my first noteworthy experience, I looked the story up and found this link from the Star Tribune;
http://www.startribune.com/local/12564991.html?location_refer=Bios

The next one that comes to mind is the September 11th terrorist attacks. I think everybody remembers that day in their own way. I was at home working on bills to get paid for the month (I had a business and worked as a sub-contractor at the time). I had the radio on when I heard them talking about a plane crashing into a skyscraper in New York City. I think most of you know the rest of that story. What was really creepy at that time, was when I went to work a few hours after that. I had a job to do near the airport, and seeing that there was no planes going in out out of there was definitely a weird experience.

My last experience that stands out to me was us invading Iraq the second time. Not necessarily as to why we did, but watching it all unfold on cable television was interesting. The way they covered it was like it was almost a video game of some sort. I'm curious if the Iraqi Army was watching us coming for them on live television. I think that time really showed what today's 24 hour news cycle is all about.