A Reaction of a different variety

It’s been a slow week here in the AFC East.  I mean the Pats have been the Pats (and they don’t even have a murderer to talk about anymore…) so nothing there.  Now that Idzik is in charge of the Jets, the Jets have been so anti-Jet it’s getting a little annoying.  Everything down in Miami has been so quiet that I’m starting to think we should send someone up to that darkened hotel room that Mr. Ross is holed up in and check that he’s still alive and the Bills seem to be honoring their late leaders memory by doing nothing and making sure that not a penny leaves the mason jars.

With this in mind I am going to write that serious piece that Mr. Flowers has been so desperate for…

Tuesday of this week marked the one year anniversary of an event that changed the loves of just about everyone I know- the attack on the finish line of the Boston Marathon.  Normally we sit here in our little bubble and talk about sports while ignoring the world around us, but on that day sports and real life collided in a way that I had hoped I would never see so close.  Maybe the fact that one of those scumbags who cowardly placed bombs in a crowd of innocent people lived in the town in RI that I had lived in for the past five years (I literally had just moved a week prior) that hit home so much but I still think about that day often.

I won’t mention the names of those a-holes, because I want history to forget them forever. Who we should remember are the everyday people like Dr. Natalie Stavas who ran the race with a broken foot, then helped save as many people as possible, Joe Andruzzi who was seen carrying several people to safety, Carlos Arredondo who literally held Jeff Bauman’s femoral artery closed with his bare hands until doctors could apply the proper dressings, or the countless marathoners who instead of seeking shelter, ran past the finish line to the closest hospital to give blood to help the victims and the police who diligently hunted those a-holes and showed us what true bravery is all about.  These are the people who showed us what a real hero is and are the ones whose names should be recorded for our children and their children to read about.

Boston is a city that defines an entire region- if you come from New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine or Rhode Island and you are in another country you say you’re from Boston just to avoid confusion (I have actually had this confusion come to me once in America when I told someone I was from RI…).  Boston literally made America and continues to push the country forward every day.  Boston is a city like no other and one that I am proud to call my home (if you grew up here like I did, it’s always going to be home).

Boston is a city that is defined by its teams like no other city (LA has Hollywood, Chicago has Oprah, New York has, well New York…).  First the long suffering of the Red Sox fan and the Celtics run of greatness that will never be matched in any of the major professional sports ever again.  Or maybe the Patriots embodiment of the American Dream- if work hard and suffer long enough, one day your horse will come in and you will be a success (Tom Brady is the horse in this metaphor).  And the Bruins fan- a working class guy that grinds his way to greatness.  If you tell someone you’re from Boston they undoubtedly will say something along the lines of, “So you’re a Red Sox fan huh.”

I’m not sure our city would have rebounded the way we did without our sports teams- The tribute that the Bruins did prior to their first game back was one that still brings tears to my eyes (and I would like to extend a big thumbs up to the Buffalo Sabres for their actions that night) and how the Red Sox took the city on their backs while we rode them to possibly the most needed World Series Championship in the history of Major League Baseball (once again, big thumbs up to just about every other MLB team for their tributes).  The teams of this city brought us back and helped us stay “Boston Strong”.

Now there will always be people that are jealous of the lives we lead or angry that we don’t worship the same god as they do (which is just plain dumb, because Jesus wasn’t Christian, Mohammed wasn’t Muslin, Buddha wasn’t Buddhist- they all just preached love and respect for their fellow man) and they will try to disrupt our happiness, but we will never let them slow us down.  This coming Monday, please turn on your TV and watch the marathon coverage and if you happen to be in the area, stop by the finish line and show them that you may hate us, but you’ll never keep us from living our lives.

The pursuit of happiness is one of the pillars that this great country was founded on and I for one am not going to let some coward with a bomb deter me in that pursuit.

Thanks for your time and please remember Martin Richard, Krystle Campbell, Lingzi Lu and Sean Collier.