What really matters
"Look, the flags are flying at half-staff," I pointed out to the Old Daughter this morning as we maneuvered the minivan into the car line in front of her school.

She looked. "I see," she said. "Why?"

"Today is September 11," I said.

"Oh yeah," she said. "I had forgotten today was September 11. We'll probably sing The Star-Spangled Banner and America the Beautiful today." The Old Daughter is 9. She was in second grade in North Texas when I took her to school that day, the last act I completed before the world stopped turning.

"I remember Mama came and took me home from school that day," she continued. "I think she was scared."

"A lot of people were scared," I said. "It was a very confusing day. Stuff happened in New York, then in Washington, then a plane crashed in Pennsylvania. We didn't know if something was going to happen next in California -- "

"-- or Missouri," she jumped in.

"Right. Or in Missouri, or in Texas. We just didn't know what was going to happen next."

"People were panicking," she said.

"Well, not really panicking," I replied. "It was semi-controlled chaos."

"I don't understand what you mean by 'semi-controlled,' " she said.

"Well, chaos means a situation out of control ... "

"I know what 'chaos' means," she replied. This is a kid who just read the first two Harry Potter books in less than a week. "I just didn't understand 'semi-controlled.' How can you have something that's chaos and controlled at the same time?"

"Well, it wasn't really panic, in that people weren't getting violent, or running around screaming, or anything, at least not where we were in Texas," I said. "But it was confusing, and that confusion was disruptive to life. You had to miss school, a lot of people went home from work, business kind of came to a stop."

"That's what the terrorists wanted to do, right?" she said. The car line inched slowly forward, as kids popped out of cars one by one and walked into school, many cars in front of us. "To confuse and disrupt us."

"Right."

"Why wouldn't they have wanted things to shut down entirely?"

"Well," I said, "I'm sure they did. But terrorists aren't that smart, or that good, or that organized. Pretty much all they can do is cause relatively small disruptions. They mainly just try to scare us. But it would take a lot more than just terrorists to shut down America."

"Because there are so many of us," she said.

"Right."

"And because Americans aren't going to be shut down by a few terrorists."

"Absolutely."

I could see the front of the car line, finally, through the windshield of the minivan. The Old Daughter gathered her stuff, completely oblivious to the profound words that came from her 9-year-old mouth. She was headed into school for just another day, its only distinction being that they would sing The Star-Spangled Banner or America the Beautiful when they normally wouldn't. It's been six hours since we had that conversation, and six hours ago was probably the last time she'll think about it.

But she gets it, just like the rest of us get it: Americans aren't going to be shut down by a few terrorists.

Peace, y'all.