Anyone under the age of 30 or so will not understand this post. That's cool. I'm extremely glad for that, read this post and you may understand how glad.

On one of my trips down to Regina, I was staying at the folks place. A blip came up on the History Channel. It showed some guy swinging a sledge hammer at The Wall. No, I don't mean the wall in Israel, though that's 'the wall' you hear about now. I mean The Wall in Berlin, capital letters.

I broke out in tears, right there, my folks place. I related to the folks that I remember the _exact_ time and place when I heard the news. I was sitting in the lower ranks mess of HMCS Saskatchewan. We were on exercises out in Whiskey, meaning the Straits between Vancouver Island and the N.American continent. Rough seas, trust me, definitely a Gravol cruise.

I'm what a lot of people (and me, in a different time) call Gen X. One of the books that tried to define us was called, appropriately enough, Generation X by Douglas Coupland. (I just threw my trade-back copy on the coffee table for re-reading.) A very good book. Read it, listen to some REM from that time-frame. They are a voice.

Now those of you younger then the aforementioned age may or may not understand what The Wall meant. What it meant to me, I can't speak for anyone else. The Wall was more then just a barrier. It was more then the concrete that stood 3 metres high. It was a symbol. It was a symbol of oppression and threat. It was the symbol of our death. It was the symbol of all those who had tried to breach The Wall and were shot by the guards.

As Sting says, in Russians, "We will bury you." Yes, Khrushchev did say that, yes, everyone believed it. Everyone had good reason to believe it. My early years were defined by the Cold War. The Cuban Missile Crisis had shocked enough people into the realization that the end of the world was the next diplomatic crisis away.

I remember one recess when myself and Rod laid out a map. Regina being the capital of SK, Moose Jaw fielded an air force base, and the silos were in North Dakota. We (as sixth graders) determined that we were toast via combustion or radiation sickness. The radiuses of the impacts (assuming accuracy) encompassed us, either directly or via fallout patterns. The hydrogen bomb is not a precision weapon. Sixth Grade! I was 12 and contemplating geo-political events, understood radiation sickness and worried about blast radiuses.

Mutually Assured Destruction isn't just a phrase, it's a way of life. Now, that sounds absurd now-a-days; destruction and way of life in the same sentence? But I swear to you, we worried about it. (Undoubtably, there will be people, and many of them, that will deny this. I'm glad of this. I'm glad that they didn't worry.)

Anyway, I saw that same commercial tonight in an ad for the History Channel. Again, I burst into tears. I felt, no, needed, to get it out. The day The Wall came down was the greatest day in my life. I remember sitting in the Mess. I remember that all of us were cheering. I remember the joy, the wish that we where there, the . . the . . . you had to experience it, magical.

I have tears streaming down my face now as I write this, because when The Wall came down it meant that the threat was gone. The division which had separated East and West was gone. Glasnost was the new word of the day. God Bless Gorbachev!

If you're curious about what those days meant to a European, go here. I cry more everytime I read this.

I could write much more about this, but it doesn't mean anything, not unless you where there. I'm sorry, my words can't convey the feeling, the euphoria and the sorrow. Such a waste of time!

Update: Krydor shares his thoughts on The Wall.

Wonderdog affirms my point of view, while calling me an emotional jelly-bean.

Cheers,
lance

Posted at: 05:03 | Comments (12) | [misc] | G