A Quote by Bob Goff

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I rushed home before the kids left for school and gathered them around our dining room table and told them what had happened. Like everyone else, we struggled for words to describe to our kids why such a thing would occur.
I would sit at the table with the black kids during lunch, and we'd do our banter back and forth. But occasionally, I'd get up and I'd go sit down with the white kids and chat with them and what not. Of course, because I come from the black table they would look at me like, 'Why are you here?'
My kids are in school and in all these clubs - chess club, fashion club, you name it. When my dad came home from work, it was late, and when he left, it was early in the morning. On my days off, I'm still taking my kids to school and picking them up. I do what I have to do to keep that relationship.
These terrible terrorism acts occur because of political situations and injustice in various parts of the world. The Middle East is heavy with injustice. After September 11,George W.Bush announced that he had always had a vision of a Palestinian state. Why didn't he tell us that before September 11, when it would have been a bit more impressive?
I remember bringing some of my other friends to our table, and everyone at our table would look at them and ask me, 'What are you doing? Why'd you bring him?' It was annoying high school stuff that still goes on now. My high school was really bad.
When we talk about something like student loans, what we should be talking about is the fact that every American wants their kids to do better than we have done. If we can get that, the other thing we'd really like is for our kids to be able to come home and raise their kids in the community where we raised them. What unites all of us, no matter where you live in the country, is we want our family to be safe, we want the next generation in our family to be more successful than us, and we would like our family to be close together.
Our kids didn't do this to themselves. They don't decide the sugar content in soda or the advertising content of a television show. Kids don't choose what's served to them for lunch at school, and shouldn't be deciding what's served to them for dinner at home. And they don't decide whether there's time in the day or room in the budget to learn about healthy eating or to spend time playing outside.
We had a teacher, named Mr. Brown, and he was writing something on the board once - he was writing something on the board, and he farted. And you would have thought kids had seen the face of God. Kids weren't even laughing; they were just sitting there screaming, just screaming. Kids had to get carted out; kids were screaming. Kids had to get carted out, and they were going to the nurses' office. Kids are crying in the hallway. 'Oh, this is our 9/11.' And it was. It was their 9/11 'cause they never thought anything like that could ever happen.
Legislation passed in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 enhanced our intelligence capabilities and strengthened our national defense, but until now our nation's immigration policies have not adapted to the needs of a post-September 11th world.
I met this amazing person, and we realized we had very similar views on how we wanted to live our lives. It’s happened quickly, with so many children. Yesterday, picking up the kids from school, Brad turned around in the car, and there were three of them. He couldn’t stop laughing. We love them and are having a great time.
Kids didn't have huge backpacks when I was their age. We didn't have backpacks at all. Now it seemed all the kids had them. You saw little second-graders bent over like sherpas, dragging themselves through the school doors under the weight of their packs. Some of the kids had their packs on rollers, hauling them like luggage at the airport. I didn't understand any of this. The world was becoming digital; everything was smaller and lighter. But kids at school lugged more weight than ever.
A dining room table with children's eager hungry faces around it, ceases to be a mere dining room table, and becomes an altar.
I was visiting my mother in Florida when the September 11, 2001 attacks happened. I was working on The Tale of Despereaux at that point. I had already gone into writing it with a great deal of trepidation and fear, and then this God-awful thing happens and it was really hard to even get back home to Minneapolis.
September 11, 2001: Citizens of the U.S., besieged by terror’s sting, rose up, weeping glory, as if on eagles’ wings.--from the poem Angel of Remembrance: Candles for September 11, 2001
Mom was a school teacher, and she had to be at work at 7:30 every morning. So Dad was in charge of us three kids around the breakfast table. He always made it creative: he did the bananas with the smiley face and the eyes with peanut butter on top, made us drink grapefruit every morning even though we had to do it holding our noses.
I've always favored kids as a player. If I walked out of the locker room and there were 100 people there and 50 of them were kids, I'd sign the 50 kids before anything else.
Not being like everyone else is a great thing, but when you're in elementary school, you want people to like you, and kids that age can be so closed-minded. I mean, I went to a little Catholic school in the San Fernando Valley! My life was so different from the other kids'.
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