Threads

My dad just sent me a link to a video. It’s a slideshow played to the song “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Billy Joel. “Have I seen this video before?” he asked. Funny he should ask.

Baditude and I have recently played a board game called "Twilight Struggle", whose theme is the Cold War. One player plays the USSR, and the other the US, and (among other things) players play card that represent actual historic events, and the result of these cards spread either US or USSR influence around the world. If you play the "Marshall Plan" card, for example, the US gets lots of influence in Western Europe... the "Nasser" card removes US influence from Egypt and adds USSR influence there. Stuff like that.

Playing this game got me really interested in the Cold War and I spent a while on Wikipedia reading about it. It’s really fascinating to know, in retrospect, just how crazy a place the world was when I was just a carefree lad, happily riding bikes and playing backyard soccer games. During my web searching, I came across a very similar video to the one he just emailed (another slideshow based on "We Didn't Start the Fire"). I've known that song for a long time. I specifically remember listening to it while driving up to Disneyland with Aileen, Sarah, Norm, and my brother in early high school. All this time, though, I never knew he was actually saying for the line "children of thalidomide". So I was pleased to fill in that little blank after all this time. Of course, I had to read about thalidomide and learn why it was included in the song.

Around the same time, an old college friend of Diana's came to visit with her family (husband and two children). One of the children was born missing her right forearm and hand. Her arm ends at the elbow. Shortly after that visit, I recounted this to my dad on the phone (this was weeks ago), and he mentioned something about thalidomide. I asked if he’d ever heard the song "We Didn't Start the Fire"... he hadn’t. But I guess he has now!

Weird how these multiple threads of my life have all joined together into a nice little package.