Was thinking about this last night. When you first come into this world ma & pa take care of you and create a protective world around you. At some point in time you begin to notice that there is a world outside of the one created for you. Sometimes that awareness comes gradually,sometimes all at once. For me it was in 1970. I was 11 years old and saw a Life magazine cover that featured a man face down on the pavement with a trail of blood running from his head. Above him was a woman down on one knee with her hands in the air and crying. After finding out what it was about I asked ma & pa why the soldiers killed him.

Never did get an answer.

How about you? When did you become aware?

 Stepped-init

Kent State? May 4, 1970?

[img]http://historyproject.ucdavis.edu/imageapplication/MarchandSlides/PCD3653/images/IMG0033.jpg[/img]

Eric The(Historical)Hun[>]:)]

I was taught to read at a very early age. As most young boys are wont to do, I soon started to read everything I could find on WWII, starting a life long love affair with history.

Of course boys of that age think themselves Immortal, all the horrible numbers of death and destruction are easily overlooked, in favor of Cool Rifles, Tanks or Planes. Young men tend to think more of heroism than the horror of holding your guts in and bleeding to death in the corner of some foriegn field.

Yet, I remember very clearly, one day, at around the age of nine or so, While flipping thru one of those big pictorial history books of WWII, Coming across a two page spread, on one page, was a picture of the Inside of a Nazi Gas Chamber, with a caption that described Six million people being herded into these things and exterminated like bugs. on the other page was what was left of a mans wrist watch that had been recovered from very near ground zero, at Hiroshima. the hands barely diserable on a hunk of melted metal, Burned off the wrist of it's owner.

There they were, the two most stark and horrible realities of our age. Genocide and The Bomb.

The realization coming together in childish mind, of the fact that there are people out there in the world, that would happily kill millions of people just because of there religion or a differing political ideal.

The realization that my childish world of happy play, backyard barbercues, bikes, School and family, could end in a second of blinding light and heat as my town and everyone I knew was incinerated by a bomb, launched by faceless men half a world away, for reasons I could not yet begin to fathom.

I made up my mind, right there, on the spot, I remember the moment with crystal clarity, That I was never calmly walking into anybodies gas chamber, EVER!!! and that I would one day understand, the how and why, that would lead someone in a far away land to want to kill myself and those I loved.

I suppose you could call that awareness.

I couldn't give an exact date, 1969-70 maybe. I was playing in the living room and the news was on and it was showing tanks, weapons fire and troop casualties. I asked my mom what Vietnam was and she said "Thats where your daddy is."

My awakening came at the ripe old age of 6 when our black and white TV was plastered with photos of JFK.  They kept saying he had been assassinated, and I didn't know that word.  I asked my mom what that meant, and she explained the whole thing to me.  The only thing I never got an answer to was "why?"

My "awareness" came slowly until one day after school my mother told me why my father and brother weren't home.  I was 13, and my mother told me that my brother and father wouldn't be back home for years, or maybe never, since my father went back into the army and my brother was joining-up.  That's when I realized that I was still small, but I was bigger and stronger than my mother.  I became very aware of just how vulnerable a person can be.z

Probably when my old man chased me through the house with his 44 mag. I think I was about 7 at the time.

Sheesh, and to think I logged on here to look at nekkid womenz...

It wasn't an event or a real life experience, it just all of sudden hit me last year.  

Damn what if?

I've always been a history lover, I started to watch more TV, the history channel, awoke my eyes to the wars of the past.

It was all over when I got onto the internet to learn further. Started realize how exposed we really are and the truth's being covered up in order to support whacked out agenda's making people good money, our money.

To be honest, now that I think about, you all here play a big part in my change in attitude about being "aware".

We are all brother's in a sense,  even though we argue, we still seem to agree about a higher cause.  

I think it was January 29, 1986 when I was in 4th grade and we were all taken to the gym to watch tv the rest of the day. Seeing the Challenger blow up over and over and seeing the teachers crying made me realize that some of the stuff on tv was real.

Good Question,

I didn't become aware until real late in life like after 26 years of age. When I realized that the world I had grown up in is not the world some people lived in.  That is when I stepped into a world where people hurt one another for no reason save they are cruel or mean or just evil.  I remember standing on a drive way and thinking, you know my whole life I have fought for right and here I am in this situation and no matter what I fight for no matter what the reason, there is nothing to be gained at all.  That any thought of RIGHT,GOOD, or Heroism is wasted on the subject at hand as the people I was facing were so evil they wouldn't recognize it anyways , it was lost on them.  I think that was the worst realization of my life.  I think that day I learned that some people are just filth, and there is nothing you can do to teach them different, you can only stay away and not be tainted by them.  That was the day that I lost my innocence of other people. That was only 3 years ago.
There life stank and if I didn't get away from them mine would not be any better. I got away.

Ben

36 when my 14 y.o. son out wrestled me[:(]

Sgtar15

During the LA riots (I forget which ones), some lady was on the TV crying that the police wouldnt protect her home.  I yelled "why not get a gun and do it yourself!" at the TV and my mom told me that "people do not need guns when the police are there to protect them" (I was ~10 at the time). I dont think she ever realized exactly what she said, in the context of the police not being there to help the lady on TV.  Of course, she was amazed when I bought my own shotgun ~9 years later.

Kharn

I think I always knew life sucked. But it wasn't until September 11, 2001 that I realized how bad it really does.  

Uh, [b]Stepped-init?[/b] You never answered my question!

Was it the famous photo from the Kent State Shooting on May 4, 1970?

It sure sounds like it, but you're the only one that can say yea, or nay!

So speak up honeychile! [:D]

Eric The(Huh?)Hun[>]:)]

I struggled with it for many of My early (6-10) years. I read, and was thought one thing in school or church, and found something quite different outside. From the age of 10 I grew up in one of the nasty (It's all nasty Now!) parts of Detroit, saw it, lived it, fought it. Tried to understand it, realized the world wasn't as it was said to be. Now much older, wiser(I hope!), and vigilant. I shudder to see/talk to the sheeple I do every day. Living lives of "Make believe" and never even knowing it.

Tall Shadow

Early in 1967 our family was together for a family reunion at my grandparent's place in the Sierra foothills in N. Cali. I was 9 at the time.  During the course of the party, an official-looking rig pulled up front and one or two guys (can't remember) got out and came to the front door. Since my uncle was in Viet Nam, I think everybody pretty much immediately knew that this was not a good thing.  (Turns out they were right; my uncle was KIA.)  Us kids were ushered into a back room while the bad news was delivered.  It was a looooong drive home afterwards.  This ended my parent's short career as "California Liberals" and was a watershed event; the implications of which are still very much manifest within our family to this very day.  

In retrospect, I can see my naive childhood pretty much started to end that day. Not a bad thing, either.
Kevin

being born on an airforce base surrounded with razor wire and military guard( thier were nukes on the base, not that i knew then) i understood that thier were people out their that wanted to hurt us and all that crap that most libral pigs still dont get today

[i]Really[/i]  AWARE???

[b]9-11-2001[/b].

The man that taught me everything about the 2nd amendment, hunting, and shooting pistols, rifles, and shotguns, and life in general, shattered my world and also scared me of what I was capable of doing.

It happened at 13 years of age when my father slapped my mother really hard across the face. It was the first and last time he ever did it. I calmly walked up to him, looking up at this man much bigger than me, gave him my eyes of the devil look, and told him if he ever hit my mother ever again that I would take one of his guns and kill him with it.

I had looked up to this man like no other son ever could. But when this man struck a woman (my mother), it was the most unimaginable thing that I could ever witness at this age. This battle hardened man who had been through some of the most extreme atrocities during the Korean conflict. This man that had taught me so much about right and wrong up to that point of my life. My father told my younger brother in confidentiality a few times through the years that he was not scared of anybody, but he was scared to death of me from that day on when he looked into my eyes and heard those words come out of my mouth.

My father and I still carried on a very close relationship right to the day that he died.
I think we both got a reality check and learned a lot from each other on that day.

I became fully aware February 19th, 1990, whici is the day my father died.  I probably could have dealt better with it, but I was the one who performed CPR on him until the paramedics arrived.  I was two days into 14 at the time.  At least he and I got to set things straight before he died.  The last thing he told me was that he loved me and was proud of me.  He died about 5 minutes later.  That was when I became aware of the harsh realities of the real world.  And that's exactly why I hope my own children never know them too soon.

Sometimes the good guys lose.
Sometimes there's no happy ending.

Before that, I was horribly afraid of nuclear war and dying.  I think it manifested itself after seeing Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove" on TV one night at our lake house.  I regularly stayed up late at night to watch the late late show.  I didn't catch much of the meaning of the show, as they had edited out most of the "weird" stuff, and it basically became a movie about nuclear war where everyone was going to die.  The image of Slim Pickins riding that bomb out of the airplane became etched in my preteen mind.  At that point, I started buying cans of tuna fish and carrying them around in a mickey mouse tackle box from one of those cheesey combo sets you can buy at Wal-Mart.  I also started buying as many BB's for my BB gun that I could find.  It was one of those crossman AR-15 clones.  Anyway, I think I was about 8 at the time.

Remember the Alamo, and God Bless Texas...

You and I were in the same grade.  I was home that day with strep throat.  I had planned to catch the launch, but I slept through it.  I remember waking up around 3-4pm to the sound of Dan Rather's voice saying that the Challenger had exploded.

Remember the Alamo, and God Bless Texas...

I remember, as a kid, the images of the Jonestown massacre. Since then, I have a general distrust of religious zealots, and a fear of Kool-aid. [;)]

Sorry Eric. Yes, it was the Kent State event. I thought your question was rhetorical, that's why I didn't reply earlier.
Also want to say thanks for some great responses. Looks like alot of us have similar awakenings.

 Stepped-init

Thanks, [b]Stepped-init![/b]

I thought it might be.

I was a Senior in High School when that happened, as a matter of fact, the day [u]after[/u] my 18th birthday!

So I remember it very well.

Eric The(Reminiscing)Hun[>]:)]

I was at Chanute AFB for advanced satellite interp. school when the Challenger blew. A very sobering event.

1972 Munich Olympics
I saw people of one religion use the Olympics as a world
stage to kill others.

[b]Detroit, July 1967 - Hiding in the basement at home for three days during the riot.[/b]

[img]http://www.sos.state.mi.us/history/museum/explore/museums/hismus/1900-75/sixties/images/sixriot.jpg[/img]




During that time when armed Black Panthers in Detroit threatened to start "killing white babies" I also learned the difference between a "black" and a "nigger".

Very soon afterwards my father got guns.

[img]http://historyproject.ucdavis.edu/imageapplication/MarchandSlides/PCD3926/images/IMG0106.jpg[/img]