Every 6 Hours

All right, so I admit it, I've been watching American Idol this season. It's weird because I have my favorite two or three, but I'm not actually all that into the show and fast forward through probably 50% of the performance show and 80% of the results show. Since I haven't actually watched a season since the beginning, I'd never watched the tear-fest that is "Idol Gives Back". But I watched it today, and let me tell ya, if Justin and Sam hadn't been home I would have probably bawled through the last hour.

What got it started? Probably the section with Reese Witherspoon where they showed empoverished children saying awful statistics. One in particular stuck with me. Every 6 hours, a child in the U.S. dies from abuse or neglect. Every six hours??? Frak. How can that even be possible?? And how come we are in some freaking war that is taking 42% of our tax money... shouldn't we be concentrating on our own problems before we go try to 'fix' someone else's? How can we let this happen?

I don't think about how lucky I am often enough. I look at Sam, and I think how lucky he is. I think about our money "problems" and think how lucky we are. Who cares if we can't pay our credit card bills? We live in a really nice house and we are surrounded by loving, supportive, friends and family. We have food in our cupboards, we have clean water to do our laundry, we have hot water to take showers, we have a comfortable bed to sleep in. We have been blessed beyond our understanding, and I hope that as I raise my children I can instill this in them and teach them how important it is to give back and help other people - every little bit helps.

So, you may think that American Idol is stupid (yeah, I think that some too), but anything that exposes American's to the stories they tell (even if it's only once a season) and raises $76 million dollars (last year's results) in one night to help people who desperately need it can't be all that bad.